


in your dying dreams

by electricnectar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dark Magic, Family Feels, Gen, Ghosts, Good Slytherins, Harry Needs a Hug, Harry Potter Has Issues, Horcrux Hunting, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, No beta we die like regulus, Regulus Black Deserves Better, Regulus Black Feels, Regulus Black Lives, Walburga Black's A+ Parenting, and 99 of them are regulus black, but they get over it, harry drinks lots of mental-health-is-important juice, kind of, patronus therapy is a thing, please sir i just want the boys to be besties, sirius isn't alive in this i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25060030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricnectar/pseuds/electricnectar
Summary: I’m going bonkers,Harry thinks to himself as he tears through the pile of Muggle pamphlets. He scowls at the titles, things like ‘Foolproof Guide to Losing a Loved One’ or ‘Navigating the Stages of Grief.’ Like another tasteless advert in the Daily Prophet: Muggle Therapist Version.But what can he do? One, he’s desperate foranyanswer, magical or not. And, two, he’s pretty sure that it isnotnormal to cope with Sirius’sdeathaccident byhallucinating his dead ex-Death Eater little brother as his personal pet ghost.Which is why, as he checks over his shoulder, he’s hoping really,reallyhard that the problem is gone. But—“Loath as I am to say it, Potter,” drawls the flickering, irritated spirit of Regulus Arcturus Black, “I’m inclined to believe that we are stuck together.Indefinitely.”…( Or, a foolproof guide to mourning your dead godfather, getting haunted by his dead brother, befriending snakes, smashing lockets, and defeating the Dark Lord in the process. )
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Harry Potter & Severus Snape, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Regulus Black & Harry Potter, Regulus Black & Sirius Black, Sirius Black & Harry Potter
Comments: 94
Kudos: 342





	1. Would You Like Some Potatoes?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you do when your beloved godfather and only sane (well, kind of sane) guardian dies? You sneak out in the dead of night, come back to eat potatoes, and try your best not to cry in front of your best friend's mum, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello :] this is an au idea I've been toying around with for a really long time, and I finally decided to get off my bum and write something instead of coming up with 238749832 plot bunnies. I just have so many feels for Regulus, this had to be done.

At two in the morning, the moon hides her pale face behind muggy clouds, groaning from the weight of imminent summer showers, and stars bedazzle the gaps. Crickets whisper, gnomes snooze—and Harry Potter lies atop one of the Burrow’s many slanted roofs, arms crossed behind his head, knees pulled up, eyes unseeing beneath the nighttime sky.

He replays the day over and over in his mind to avoid any thoughts of actual substance. Dumbledore came to get him from the Dursleys. Wonderful. He got to meet the new professor. Pleasantly interesting, though Slughorn resembles his name a bit too faithfully to be kind, just _oozing_ with self-importance. Very similar, as Harry imagines, to the way an actual slug oozes slime.

But anything’s better than being stuck on Privet Drive.

He turns on his side and removes his glasses, curling into a fetal position and opting to stare at the blurry shingles by his head instead. His shirt is thin but faintly damp from the crushing humidity of British summertime. His thoughts are foggy, and even the crickets sound a bit muffled through all the mental cotton, but he’s grateful for it because…

A moment of clarity, and the Veil appears. Silvery whispers, reaching hands, an empty grin and emptier eyes framed by black strands that already seem too far to grasp—

Harry shivers and turns his gaze back to the moon, his thoughts back to Dumbledore.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks plaintively, because Albus Dumbledore isn’t exactly a peachy topic either.

Ever since the confrontation in the office after…the Ministry incident…he’s felt sore on the whole thing about being Dumbledore’s supposed favorite pupil. Harry had never really thought about it before then, but with the knowledge of the prophecy came the uncomfortable realization that Dumbledore’s vested interest in Harry’s wellbeing was just another entry in a long list of side effects. The residue from being the miracle superbaby, the Boy-Who-Lived, and now, the Chosen One.

The idea sends a fresh gust of resent through him. His emotional turmoil was pretty well masked during their small journey from Little Whinging to Ottery St. Catchpole because in that moment Dumbledore was his veritable savior from hell. Gratitude has a funny way of hiding fledgling grudges.

But he still feels a deep, weathered anger at the fact that he’d let himself believe he was special for any other reason. He’d let himself fall into the glimmers of acceptance in those twinkling spectacles and private smiles that seemed to be reserved for him, as if he had some unique stake in Dumbledore’s maze of magical mysteries. But the only stake he has is as Dumbledore’s sharpest weapon.

 _Of course_ , he thinks, because isn’t that just the truth? Being a favored mace would make anyone else feel singular and proud, but Harry? Harry’s just tired. He’s only special because his parents died, because his mother’s sacrificial love created the ultimate Uno reverse card, a big old _“haha sucker, you thought”_ to His Lord Snakeface. Except it doesn’t even _matter_ anymore because he _took_ his blood and sullied the only remnant of Lily Potter that Harry has, the magic running through his soul that now runs through the blackened veins of that _evil_ bastard. Harry’s not even special in that regard anymore. And then, where does that leave him?

Dumbledore said his apologies, but the prophecy changed everything. How could Harry ever think that anyone could care about him beyond his potential to be a savior? Hadn’t he avoided Harry all fifth year just because he _thought_ there was an inkling of darkness within him? He watched Harry lose his mind from afar, he subjected him to Snape’s mind invasions, and he didn’t even _try_ to set up a feasible backup plan, a way to _stop the visions_ from getting into his head and worming into his heart and taking root in his fears, he let Harry become the fool playing to the tune of his own ignorance, and it all culminated in– in—

Harry shudders again and lets himself tumble off the roof onto the next landing. There’s no point in blaming Dumbledore because it’s not his fault, how could Harry think that, it’s always, _always_ Harry’s fault, and he’ll just have to get a hold of himself before he gets anyone else killed, before he becomes any more _alone_ than he already is.

He slips through the window, back into Percy’s old bedroom where the old cooling charms, neatly and properly cast, have not yet faded even after Percy’s flight to the new and distant future, leaving only his enchantments behind.

It’s summer everywhere else, but the room feels just as cold, just as maddeningly empty, as Harry does.

✷

“Harry, mate, wake _up_.”

He opens his eyes to see a head of red hair floating above him, and its owner is shaking Harry’s arm none too gently. Harry lets out a noise of protest, and Ron’s blurry silhouette backs off, saying, “Oh, that was quick.” The clock seems to be pointing at 9, but he can’t really tell without his glasses on.

“What,” Harry grumbles as he gropes around for his glasses.

“You look like shit, mate,” Ron announces pleasantly.

“ _Language,_ Ronald, honestly,” comes a voice in the corner. Harry finally finds his glasses wedged underneath his thigh and awkwardly maneuvers them onto his face to see Hermione sitting primly on the desk.

“Oh. Hi, Hermione.”

“Hi, Harry.” She hesitates. “Ron’s not wrong, you know—you don’t look well. I mean, just _look_ at those dark circles. When did you sleep?” Her voice is full of concern as she frets. “Oh, Harry, you should really be sleeping more. Deprivation stunts your growth.”

“Thanks, mum,” he responds wryly as he pulls on some socks, feeling very much like shit as he does it. Chills run a circle through his skull when he bends down, reminding him emphatically that he is very much suffering from sleep deprivation. But he’s not going to give Hermione the satisfaction of knowing that she’s right, not this time.

“She’s right,” Ron has to say. “Just look at me. And I sleep a _lot_.”

“Not sure that’s something to be proud of,” Harry mutters under his breath, prompting Ron to flip him off, which inspires another round of scolding from Hermione. It’s entertaining, but eventually, like the good friend he is—though it’s more that his pounding skull can’t take it anymore—he has to stop them. “Guys,” he says. “Hey, hey, _GUYS!”_

Finally, the two stop to turn to him as if finally remembering why they woke him up in the first place.

“Oh right, we came up to get you because Mom went and made breakfast early, and we figured you’d wanna eat something.”

“Come down when you’re ready, Harry,” and Hermione darts forward to wrap him in a hug, then heads back to the entrance, dragging Ron with her. Ron shoots him a grin, and the door closes behind them.

The strangeness of the interaction unsettles Harry, but he pins it on his “I-just-woke-up-after-a-night-on-an-uncomfortable-roof-and-now-I’m-really-fucking-tired” brand of brain fuzz. Then he grabs his toothbrush from his bag and heads for the bathroom.

On the way there he runs into Ginny, who gives him a nervous smile and an obligatory “good morning,” and Harry mumbles it back, startled, before she leaves as quickly as she appeared.

It’s not until he arrives downstairs to see that same nervous smile mirrored in Mrs. Weasley’s expression that Harry finally realizes what’s going on.

✷

Breakfast is an odd affair. On one hand, it seems as normal as ever—kitchen suffused with sunlight, food as delicious as ever, Weasley sibling squabbles contributing to 90% of the noise. On the other hand, Fleur Delacour is here, and for some reason she’s part of that noise. Then there’s the fact that Fred and George are at _work_ instead of here, as they have for-seemingly-ever, pushing the noise past 100%. Percy, too, is not here to scold and fume.

And then there’s the conspicuous lull in activity whenever their bubble of cheer floats too close to Harry.

“Would you like some more potatoes, dear?” Mrs. Weasley asks, face cheery, spoon in hand. The rest of the table falls quiet. Harry can hear Ron scuffing his slipper against the floor.

“No, thank you,” Harry says politely. “I have enough already,” and he points at the small pile of rosemary potatoes on the edge of his plate. He scrapes the plate awkwardly for a few pieces and puts them in his mouth, chewing with a smile that he hopes is pleasant. Mrs. Weasley gives him a grateful look, and the table’s volume slowly rises back to normal.

“Ginny, Ginny, my naïve young sister,” Ron tuts. “You think the Wimbourne Wasps have any chance against the Arrows this year? You clearly haven’t seen the Appleby Beater. He’s mad fast, faster than any other Beater in the league. He’s going to knock out all your buzzing Wasps and win the Arrows the championship. You can tell me you were wrong when you cough up all your Sickles,” he says with a smug grin.

“Oh, really?” Ginny, as usual, looks dangerous and ready to strike. “None of that is going to matter if the Seeker gets the Snitch first or if the Chasers know how to dodge. How fast can your _Beater_ fly, huh? The Appleby _Arrows_ are going to win because they actually use all their players with smart strategies instead of relying on a single _meathead_ with a bat. I won’t even say ‘I told you so’ when they steal the Cup from under your nose.”

“Hey, you can’t just call the best Beater in centuries a _meathead_. That’s plain illogical!”

“Oh, Ron,” Hermione interjects. “What do you know about logic?”

“Wh—”

“See? Girls know better, _Ron_ ,” Ginny trills.

“Please don’t drag me into this,” Hermione says with effected pain. “I don’t know a thing about Quidditch.”

“I do!” Fleur chimes in. “I ‘appen to know a lot of things about brooms.”

“Why _thank_ you for your input, _madame_ ,” Ginny responds sarcastically, rolling her eyes and tossing her hair. “ _Phlegm_ ,” she adds under her breath.

“Hey, hey, don’t be rude. Let the lady talk,” Ron says placatingly, leaning across the table to lean his chin on his hands. Somehow, his elbow misses the butter dish by just a hair. “I want to hear about _brooms_ , Fleur.”

“That is so kind of you, Ronald. But I am afraid I should not offend those who wish me to be silent,” she says, evidently missing the innuendo, and casts a narrow look at Ginny.

“None, of that, _madame_ ,” Ginny replies with a sugary sweet smile. “I just don’t think _Ronald_ can take any further education. You see, his brain is the size of a troll’s, and he’s never been good enough at Quidditch to even be allowed to touch a nice broom.”

“You take that back unless—”

“Unless what?” Ginny spreads her arms out, goading. “Here, I take it back. Now what? What are you gonna do to me, huh?!”

“ _Children_ ,” Hermione warns sternly.

“I _have_ touched a nice broom. My best mate has a _Firebolt_ , in case you forgot while you went off and got a right _swollen head_ —"

“Oh! Firebolts are magnificent,” Fleur interrupts. “How’d you get it, ‘arry?”

Everyone there remembers Harry’s third year vividly, the broom races in the summer, and the explanations that arose during his fifth. Everyone but Fleur knows who gave him that broom. The table falls silent.

“Really, are you sure you wouldn’t like some more potatoes, Harry?” Mrs. Weasley asks loudly, spoon waving frantically over the bowl.

“Yes, I’m fi—"

“These potatoes ‘ave too much rosemary in them, Molly. Maybe he would like some more pancakes instead,” and Fleur holds out the plate of blueberry pancakes with the small pitcher of syrup. Everyone looks at him beseechingly, softly, with so much kindness he feels he may just choke on it.

“No, I—" Harry stutters as he shoves the last bit of potatoes and eggs into his mouth and pushes away from the table. “I – I think I’m going to go get some fresh air.” He finally looks up and jerks his head back to Mrs. Weasley. “Is the Floo powder still on the mantle?”

She looks startled. “Yes, dear. Why—?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Weasley, I promise I’ll be safe, thank you for breakfast, bye,” he manages to eke out, and then he stumbles off towards the sitting room where the fireplace sits cold and ready.

With a deceptively steady hand, he grabs a handful of green powder and throws it out before him. Harry takes a deep, shaky breath in the ringing silence.

“Number 12, Grimmauld Place.”

✷

Harry tumbles out onto an ornate rug to meet the round, bulbous eyes of a house elf. His emotions are already running wild, and he _swears_ he’ll combust if Kreacher says a single thing about being the new—

“Filthy, half-blood master,” Kreacher croaks, accidentally finishing Harry’s thought. His tea cozy looks even more ragged than the last time he’d seen it, but the hatred in the elf’s eyes burns with just the same intensity as he glares down at Harry, who’s sprawled out on the antique design, body aching, eating dust. “Mistress would be so sad to see what Kreacher has to serve, no, no, no…”

“Go away,” Harry says, his voice trembling from the sheer effort of just existing.

“Not even a Black, he is. At least the last one was a Black...a traitor, he was, but still of the Noble and Most Ancient House—”

“SHUT UP AND GO AWAY!”

Kreacher fixes him with a look of utter loathing.

“…of _Black_ ,” he spits, raising a thin, gnarled hand to snap his fingers. With a deafening crack, Kreacher disappears.

Harry lets his forehead fall to hit the rug, breaths coming out in short, heavy pants. Kreacher’s abrupt departure is less of a comfort and more a painful reminder that he truly is the elf’s new master, a reminder of _why_ the elf needed a new master in the first place. When Dumbledore had come to Number 4 Privet Drive to retrieve Harry, he told him about the will, discovered a week prior. But hearing is different from seeing the evidence, different from feeling the magical certainty of his new ownership.

He turns on his side and lets himself flop onto his back, arms spread out like a bird in flight.

And yet, he’s caged.

He’d spent his month at Privet Drive in a listless daze, staring out his window, praying for a distraction from the wide expanse of emptiness that seemed to stretch infinite in every direction. The Dursleys were less a prison this summer than Harry was to himself. He’d looked forward to leaving for the warm surety of distraction at the Burrow.

 _I overreacted_ , Harry thinks with a dawning horror. Guilt unfurls in his gut at the thought of the Weasleys sitting in their kitchen, sad and bewildered by his apparent rejection when all they’d done was feed him and worry for him and _care_ for him. How could he hurt the people who were only trying to love?

Harry pinches his arm with vengeance and stifles the yelp of pain. It’s just that…he couldn’t take it anymore, sitting at that table…surrounded by the deluge of noise and the crushing, suffocating concern. He’d had a flash of a vision, the next month at the Burrow laid out before him—a long reel of mournful gazes, glancing touches, and so much _pity_ , gazing at him and treating him like a porcelain doll. He’d rather live at the Leaky Cauldron alone than subject himself to the constant reminder that life has changed, that there’s a gaping hole in his heart he can’t fix.

(Clearly, they had a point when they insinuated that Harry is not okay. But Harry is sixteen years old and too busy with _not dying_ to learn some healthy thought patterns—though he’s not about to admit it.)

Harry drags himself onto the nearby sofa, finally stopping to take in his surroundings. When his eyes fall on the family tapestry, he realizes that he’s in the drawing room. It took him embarrassingly long to realize where he was, _and_ it’s one of the last places Harry had ever talked to him, hugged him, indulged in his presence—even if his voice was vicious and bubbling with old resent for an old family. Though, Harry couldn’t be expected to know; it’s not as if he’d spent much time here before…inheriting it.

Just this one room is rife with reminders of Sirius. But, oddly, he feels calm. The skittish, unsettled sensation of longing and displacement that had rejected all reminders, all references, now feels muted. Somehow, being in Sirius’s much-hated childhood home soothes him, as if the empty, broken house could somehow relate to Harry, or Harry to it.

He moves over to the tapestry and stands before the winding tree, forest green velvet shifting and reflecting light under his fingers. Even abandoned and dusty the Black home is elegant, beautiful in a haunting, spectral manner, and the gigantic tree before him is proof of this beauty. Its branches are laden with centuries of dark history and lost stars, but the magnificent stretch of its influence crawls up and up, impressing its grandeur and significance upon all who see it.

He kneels down to the bottommost branches, staring unthinkingly at the blackest scorch mark.

 _Sirius Orion Black_ is printed in stark, imposing script beneath. He lets himself trail his fingers over the rough texture of the burn, a flat and rugged space that lacks all the gentle plushness of velvet. Ironically, this is the perfect metaphor for Sirius’s personality—possibly the only true representation of him in the entire house. Walburga clearly didn’t understand just how well her blast had suited her older son.

Harry lets his gaze drift to the branch right next to Sirius’s. The artistic renderings of the Black family members on the family tree are not nearly portraiture, but there’s enough detail in this one to note the same grey eyes, the same sharpness in bone structure, and the same wavy black hair—but shorter, sweeping across the cheek to fall somewhere by the ear as opposed to the shoulders.

His _brother_ , Harry realizes with muted fascination.

_(“My parents with their pure-blood mania, convinced that to be a Black made you practically royal... my idiot brother, soft enough to believe them...”)_

Sirius had never said anything else about him, not even his name. Sometimes, though, Harry noticed that he spent too long on the fourth floor where his and his brother’s old bedrooms are, even though Sirius no longer slept there.

Once, Harry had gone up to get him, curious…

Harry shakes his head and fixes his gaze on the name embedded in the soft velvet, maybe as soft as the actual person, according to Sirius.

 _Regulus Arcturus Black_. Death Eater, pureblood, Slytherin, and the better son. The obedient Black who listened to his parents without a question. Harry thinks vehemently, _Just like Malfoy, then._

He feels a roiling disgust, and with that, the enchantment, the spellbound curiosity, is extinguished. He feels little sympathy for these dark, twisted Slytherins who can’t extricate themselves from the comforting safety of tradition and belonging—blind loyalty and freely given trust—unable to have a thought of their own.

( _“But what about you, Harry? What about Dumbledore?_ )

( _“Shut up.”_ The voice goes silent.)

He sits there in a staring contest with the small picture of Sirius’s brother. Was James more a brother to Sirius than his blood relation? Did the brothers talk? Did they get along? Harry doesn’t know why he can’t look away. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s never had a sibling and doesn’t know what it feels like. Or maybe it’s the realization that there’s this whole new aspect to Sirius that Harry had never even considered before: this mysterious sibling who has known Sirius since birth, who probably knows things about him that no one else does…who would have been Harry’s proxy relative had he survived whatever it is that killed him.

Unthinkingly, he traces the name, absorbed in the thrum of latent magic and the silence that hangs and sways…

…and shatters.

“Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?”

✷

Harry jumps and whips around to face the voice to see—

Sirius…?

But no, that’s not quite right. This intruder isn’t Sirius, even if he does have the inky black hair, the grey eyes, and the long, straight nose; his angles of are softer, and his stature is slighter and smaller.

However, most importantly, he’s _transparent_. And he looks like a _teenager_. Sirius isn’t a teenager, but—

But he _could be_ , if he were a ghost.

A delirious joy springs alive within him. This…ghost, spirit, phantom of sorts, might be Sirius’s younger self, trapped here in Grimmauld place and waiting to relieve Harry of the bone-deep weight of his loneliness.

“Sirius?” Harry asks before he has a chance to collect his thoughts, hope alighting all his nerves. But the stranger’s eyes widen before his face settles into a freezing expression of…blankness.

“Even in my death the traitor haunts me,” he says in a dark, quiet voice that is not Sirius Black’s, which is springy, slightly mad, quick and full of life. This is not Sirius’s voice. This is the voice of an aristocrat, tilled sounds that are devoid of feeling, of emotion—a tightly controlled announcement of danger.

This is not Sirius.

Oddly, part of Harry feels relieved…but it’s masked by the crushing helplessness that suddenly descends on him, chasing out any figment of hope that he might have had. This stranger is not Sirius, and the disappointment burns raw. But how? How is he _not?_ He has all the look, the stance, all the trademark features of the House of Black stamped on his features.

And with a jolt, Harry remembers the tree at his back, the portrait, the name he was just observing in an inexplicable trance.

“You – you’re—”

“None of your concern,” the ghost says softly. “But you know who I am, do you? Then maybe you wouldn’t mind returning the favor and enlightening me as to why the spitting image of _James Potter_ is sitting in my house.” He floats closer to Harry, and his face is still expressionless, but the question seems to be charged with… _something_. It’s then that Harry notices that the ghost’s hands are shaking where they’re tucked into his elbows, his arms crossed in a defensive position, but Harry’s mind is too stuffed with panic and confusion to make any sense of these observations, too busy being stuck on the mention of his dad’s name.

He’s never heard it spoken with so much _venom_ before—he’d heard it culled in tones of warmth, pride, exasperation, _admiration_ , and Snape…Snape had always avoided saying it at _all_.

“I don’t know who you are,” Harry says, but even as he says the words, he finds he doesn’t quite believe them. Who else could look so much like – like Sirius? Who else could say the words “my house” with so much conviction?

For the ghost, the statement doesn’t seem to register, and he continues to draw nearer to Harry, who’s beginning to lean forward from sitting against the wall himself.

“This isn’t your house,” Harry begins to talk. Tentatively. Years of almost dying have refined his ‘ _time-to-make-sure-you-don’t-do-anything- **too-** stupid’ _instincts, and now they’re blaring. He needs to tread carefully. “This…this house belongs to _me_. I don’t know who you are—” _no_ , no that’s not quite true, because Harry has an inkling of who this is, but he can’t say it, can’t admit it lest he _truly_ loses his mind, “—but this place doesn’t belong to you.”

For the first time since he appeared, the boy’s expression falters.

“The magic accepts only blood as long as there is blood to accept…” he says quietly to himself, as if he doesn’t mean for Harry to hear it, and then he looks up, grey meeting green. “You – you are not a Black.” His voice is shaky, and it breaks off when he turns his head into his shoulder to cough lightly.

“ _Obviously_ I’m not a Black,” Harry remarks sarcastically, but the ghost is still too stunned to properly respond. Maybe it’s not that obvious he’s not a Black? He does have dark hair. But he doesn’t have the eyes or the nose, and, as modestly as possible, who _doesn’t_ recognize that he’s _Harry Potter?_

And personally, Harry isn’t sure why _this_ is the thing to break through his cold facade. Surely, he would have already realized this through haunting Grimmauld Place?

 _(But, then, why hasn’t anybody ever seen him before?_ says the voice in the back of his head. _The Order and a whole pack of Weasleys traipsed through these halls for an entire year…)_

And _what_ is with the shaking and coughing?

He furrows his brow in confusion. “Do you really not know?”

“About what?” he demands.

“About why this house became mine.” _Duh_ , he thinks.

“By my knowledge, Number 12 Grimmauld Place should belong to either Walburga Black or Sirius Black, whether the idiot wants it or not.”

The unease creeps back, and Harry has the realization that he – he really _doesn’t_ know.

He needs to choose his next words wisely.

“Haven’t you heard? There are—” he inhales deeply, slowly, so as to not stutter, “—there are no more Blacks. The last one, he—” Harry chokes on the last word, but he knows that they both know what he meant to say.

“Sirius,” the ghost says lowly, tinged with barely restrained panic. “Sirius – what happened to him?”

And Harry doesn’t respond. For a moment, the fact that he’s talking to a potentially dangerous, obviously pureblood, and possibly Harry-hating _dark_ wizard, who’s being all _ghostly_ and _weird_ right in front of him, just fades away, and he’s left with the distinct impression of talking to himself. Maybe to the self from just over a month ago, in June, kneeling in the Department of Mysteries and just wishing the world would collapse like a house of cards and vanish.

He still wishes that he could have broken the news more easily; and when he sees the boy’s composure finally slip, his heart pangs in an inexplicable beat of empathy. Even during their argument, the young adult had maintained an air of dignity, but now the shivering is more pronounced even if his coughing has paused, his posture has lost its rigidity, and the mask of lofty coldness seems to have fallen entirely.

Harry _knows_ how this feels. He wishes he could reach out and extend his comfort.

But he can’t. Because this precise moment is the nail in the coffin that holds his dead hopes—the hopes that this boy could be his godfather come to life as a guiding spirit.

He is clearly a Black, however, and only one other Black who lived in Grimmauld Place could have known Sirius well enough to call him by his first name so naturally. Only one other Black who’d died this young.

He appeared as soon as Harry touched his name.

Regulus Arcturus Black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feedback fills the void in my soul <3 please- even if this is troll or dreadful we're (I'm) all here for it
> 
> [tumblr](https://firefork.tumblr.com/)


	2. Ghost Comas Are a Thing Now, Apparently

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh my god,” Harry says with the air of someone who’s had an amazing realization…or someone who’s about to say something incredibly stupid. "You've been in a _ghost coma_."
> 
> A beat of silence.
> 
> “I – excuse me?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was really surprised by how well people took to the first chapter...like i didn't think people would actually be into what's basically me crying about regulus in long fic format so the evidence that some of you actually ARE into it just makes me emotional. thank you all :'] now, *submits myself for further judgment on the chapter below*

“You’re Sirius’s brother,” Harry says quietly. At these words, the young man before him seems to remember himself and tries to piece back his former self-possession.

He isn’t so successful.

“So I am,” he admits with quiet venom. “Though I’d prefer to be known as ‘Regulus’ instead of just another extension of my brother’s existence. When did he die?”

Privately, Harry isn’t sure what he means. Sirius never talked about his brother aside from those few instances when he ranted about his dark, evil family, and even then, he revealed next to nothing about their dynamic.

 _How odd_ , he thinks, that Sirius had a whole sibling relationship hidden somewhere in his mysterious past. And come to think of it, he never did talk about his past if it didn’t involve James or Remus. Sirius was always such a strong, independent type that he’d just assumed that he would be an only child, but here in front of Harry is the obvious evidence to the contrary.

“A – a couple months ago,” he finally answers.

Regulus glares at Harry scathingly. “The _year_ ,” he clarifies.

Harry flinches. “Shouldn’t you know this?” he asks dumbly.

“Excuse me? How would I know? I didn’t even know my brother had _died_ , or that my mother is probably also dead, or that _you_ , some random invader, have somehow come into possession of our ancestral home,” he scoffs bitterly. “The last thing I even _remember_ is—” he stops and looks away, “—is dying. And then I was here, watching some commoner poke at our family tapestry.”

“Wait.” Harry needs a moment. He needs _many_ moments. “ _Wait_. This whole time we’ve been arguing, I thought you were like the secret ghost of Grimmauld that no one ever found, but _you didn’t even know the year??”_

“…The secret ghost of Grimmauld Place,” Regulus says flatly. Harry doesn’t dignify that with an answer; his head is spinning much too hard, frantically doing the arithmetic on the dates he knows to quantify his own disbelief.

“If you’re his brother, then – then you died in the war at least fifteen years ago. The last thing you remember is dying which was at least _fifteen years ago_.”

Harry gapes at him, expecting some response, but Regulus only shakes his head slowly with a flat expression as if to say, ‘you still haven’t given me the date, genius.’ Which he hasn’t.

“Oh. Right. It’s 1996 right now.”

Regulus flinches hard. “ _What?”_

Part of Harry is screaming at him to just leave and forget this ever happened. But the other part of him, the part that’s been conditioned by years of danger and a misplaced sense of responsibility—brought to you by yours truly, Albus Dumbledore—feels like it’s his job to get involved and _fix_ this. He curses himself in his head as he starts to pace back and forth, worrying the soles of his shoes against the scuffed rug.

“It’s been fifteen years since 1981,” Harry mutters, “and the war you lived in is over. I don’t know if you knew that—” he remembers what Sirius said about his brother’s death ( _…from what I found out after he died, he got in so far, then panicked about what he was being asked to do and tried to back out…_..) and winces, “—well, probably not.” A quick glance at the empty look on Regulus’s face is confirmation enough.

“What happened to the Dark Lord?” he asks. Harry scowls at the moniker.

“ _Voldemort_ , your old master—” Harry privately savours his massive flinch, “—disappeared in 1981.”

“How?” Regulus breathes, as if in total disbelief. Harry imagines he probably is.

He reaches a hand to his bangs almost unconsciously, the act a well-practiced instinct with how often he’s done it—for fear, for reassurance, for appeasing people, or for getting them away from him, for _hiding_.

Now he moves his bangs for something entirely different—to draw attention to the scar.

 _You don’t have to tell him_ , says a dark part of his mind. _Just think about it—this is a person who knows absolutely nothing about you, and you can keep it that way. You can keep him to yourself. He’s still young, he can be the friend you’ve never had and never will have the chance to meet ever again, no expectations, no fear, no pity—_

_(But how would you feel if someone kept a whole world from you? You already know how it feels.)_

He counts to five in his head and inhales slowly.

“I got this as a one-year-old when I pulled some miracle magic trick on him. I don’t really know how, but he disappeared.” Harry holds his breath, waiting for the ghost’s reaction, for fear or shock, _anything_.

Against all his expectations, Regulus laughs sharply, the loudest sound he’s made since appearing.

“Nonsense. You were a _baby_.”

“Yes,” Harry says, annoyed but pleasantly surprised at his reaction. “I literally _just_ said that.”

“Well pardon me for trying to wrap my head around this, oh _great_ saviour,” Regulus snaps, though he isn’t looking at Harry to notice the way he flinches at the title. Harry scowls impressively at the ghost’s side profile.

“Oh, did I forget to mention?” he says pettily, a striking image of innocence and naivete. “Your Dark Lord came back two years ago.”

But, to Harry’s surprise, Regulus doesn’t seem shocked. Instead, he just sighs in heavy disappointment. A dark look passes across his face, and a tremor runs through him as he coughs into his elbow again. “Of _course_ he is,” he says, as if this were entirely obvious. It’s almost confident, the way he intones the statement, completely at odds with how shaken he looks. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

At this, Harry remembers just _why_ Sirius and Regulus hadn’t gotten along.

“Try and conceal your excitement a bit better, _Death Eater_ ,” he grits out.

Harry still hasn’t entirely processed the fact that he’s talking to _Sirius’s_ dead little _brother_ , the obedient son, the tragic figure who died so young. He still hasn’t absorbed the reality of being confronted by _Regulus Black_ when this could have been _Sirius_ —a reprieve from the dark days of endless denial and numbing grief.

But it _is_ easy to latch onto his latent hatred for the family that created Bellatrix, endless darkness, and all the pain that had haunted Sirius from birth, through adolescence and adulthood, and to his death. The loose confusion and anger rise up to cloud his senses so thoroughly that he barely processes that Regulus is still talking.

“How _dare_ you call me a Death Eater as if you have any idea what I’ve been through,” Regulus hisses. “I don’t want that dishonourable _stain_ of a snake back in this world any more than you do, but I simply find it incredibly foolish to expect any less from the most _dangerous Dark wizard in history_.”

“Oh yeah?” Harry snorts. “And how am I supposed to believe you?”

“Well, we could start with the fact that you deliberately chose to say ‘he disappeared’ over ‘he _died_.’ Do I need a clue more glaringly obvious?”

Harry wrinkles his nose. “Nobody’s brain works that fast,” he says, channelling his inner Ron.

Regulus casts him a pitying look.

“Let me guess. Gryffindor?” he asks in a simpering tone.

Harry squawks. “Hey, you don’t need to say that like it’s an insult, _Slytherin_. And I’m proud of being a Gryffindor. It’s one of my only connections to my parents.” It slips out before he can hold it, too used to the fact that people usually, well, _know_ his parents are dead. He curses himself in his head and bites his tongue vengefully.

Regulus’s expression softens a little, but just barely.

“Sirius was proud of being a Gryffindor too,” he says searchingly. “How do you know him?” He furrows his brow as if just realizing something crucial. “Wait a minute. What’s your _name?”_

Harry looks away.

“I’m Harry Potter. Sirius is… _was_ my godfather.” Harry can hear Regulus’s soft inhale.

“Of course, the only person crazy enough to make Sirius a guardian would be James Potter…” Regulus says to himself before looking back up at Harry. “So you _are_ his son.”

Harry twitches at the return of that dark tone in his voice when he says his dad’s name, but he refrains from saying anything to focus on the more pressing matter of Regulus’s woeful ignorance of current events and, well, everything else.

“Um, not to sound like a total prat, but how did you not know who I was? I’m, well, I’m kind of famous,” he says awkwardly. “You know, for being the miracle baby. I just don’t get how you could have been around without hearing about anything that’s been going on, since dying is the last thing you remember. Were you trapped in some secret room?” he rambles. “This place was kind of occupied by a lot of people until very recently.”

Harry is convinced that, had Regulus not been raised to be so uptight and devotedly pureblood, he would absolutely be cursing right now, if the murderous look in his eyes is any indication of his distaste at the idea of strangers traipsing through these halls.

“I wasn’t in Grimmauld Place,” he says tightly.

“Oh.” Harry didn’t know that ghosts could leave their attachment points. “So, where were you then? How are you here now?”

“I was nowhere, busy being properly _dead_ , most likely. And I haven’t the faintest idea why I’m here and speaking to _you_.”

 _Of course the world has to throw me the strangest fucking ghost situation ever_ , Harry thinks bitterly.

“Right. Okay. So you’re just here, for no reason, fifteen years post-mortem—”

“Seventeen.”

“Huh?”

“Seventeen years. You said it’s 1996, correct? I died in 1979.”

“Holy shit,” Harry breathes.

“Quite,” Regulus agrees, then wrinkles his nose. “Though I’d prefer if you didn’t use profan—”

“Oh my god,” Harry says with the air of someone who’s had an amazing realization…or someone who’s about to say something incredibly stupid. “You’ve been in a _ghost coma_.”

A beat of silence.

“I – excuse me?!”

“Think about it. You have no memories of the past, you’re a ghost almost _two_ _decades_ after dying…you’ve been in a _ghost coma_.” Harry grins fantastically, though part of him is screaming _shut up, Potter, you’ve finally cracked under the pressure like a big dumb egg, shut UP_ , but he dutifully ignores it because it’s true, he _is_ cracking, and if ill-timed humour is all he has at his disposal, then by God, he will use it. “There’s no shame in being a late bloomer,” he adds cheerfully.

Regulus looks so utterly, completely bewildered, that all concept of ‘I’m a freezing, coldblooded pureblood’ or ‘I am dead, woe is me’ or ‘I think I’m better than you because you’re stupid’ has abruptly vanished.

“Potter, I swear I would _hurt_ you if I weren’t—"

A crash stops Regulus from finishing his threat, and both boys whirl to face the fireplace where Arthur Weasley is now awkwardly adjusting the broken lamp that used to sit at the foot of the hearth.

“Oh, Harry! Good, you’re here, we were so worried…” he says breathlessly. Mr. Weasley’s ginger hair is as uncombed as it’s ever been, and his jacket is covered in soot as if his Flooing instincts hadn’t kicked in. As if he’d been panicked, rushing. But the beaming relief on his face is bright and palpable.

“I’m sorry,” Harry says quietly, the memory of why he’d come in the first place rushing back, as well as all the heavy, heavy guilt.

Then, he realizes that he doesn’t know how to explain the new addition to the room.

“Oh, Mr. Weasley, um.” He darts a quick glance at Regulus, who looks consternated and vaguely nervous, before jerking his head back to come up with some excuse for Regulus’s existence. “This – this is—"

“Harry, you don’t have to explain what this is,” he interrupts quickly as he gets closer to Harry to pull him into a quick one-armed embrace.

“I – I don’t?”

“No, of course not.” He draws back to hold Harry by the shoulder, giving him that same sad, kind expression he’d been subjected to all morning. “We understand that you’re going through a hard time, Harry, and if being here comforts you, then—”

Harry’s face burns with embarrassment. He can’t imagine what Regulus must be making out of this exchange, and then there’s the roiling pit of shame within his own stomach.

“That’s not what I meant, actually, I just wanted to explain—”

“There’s nothing to explain,” Mr. Weasley finishes firmly. “Though, I must ask you to come back with me now, Harry. It’s not safe for you to be away from the Burrow for very long, what with all the nastiness out there these days. Just following suggestions, you know how Dumbledore is…”

“Yes, of course I do,” Harry responds faintly, smothering the familiar flicker of rage.

“I really am sorry to interrupt, though.”

And then Mr. Weasley looks straight at Regulus. Harry freezes. Regulus floats off a tad further from Harry, saying placatingly in Mr. Weasley’s direction, “I’m just a ghost, and I can’t hurt you…”

But Mr. Weasley…doesn’t seem to hear. In fact, his eyes haven’t even shifted to follow Regulus’s movement.

Harry turns his head slowly in fear, following the man’s gaze to Sirius’s portrait on the tree.

“Bollocks,” he whispers.

“Language,” Mr. Weasley admonishes instinctively. “Don’t worry one bit, Harry, there’s no shame, no shame at all. Let’s go now, all right?”

Harry chooses to not respond, and he nods blankly at him before turning to look at Regulus pleadingly, who seems to be just as shocked, just as unnerved by the fact that Mr. Weasley _can’t see or hear the literal ghost in the room._

While his mind is still buzzing with panic, he lets himself get pulled to the fireplace, accepts a handful of powder, absently calls out ‘the Burrow,’ and lands back on the familiar wooden floorboards of the Burrow. There’s an immediate cacophony that he can barely register.

Harry whips his head around, blindly looking for Regulus to see if he’s still here, attached to _him_ and not the house, and then he finally sees the ghost floating right in front of the fireplace with an unreadable expression. He doesn’t seem to know what’s happening either, and so, with this, the anxiety starts to rise once again.

_“Harry, we were so worried…”_

_“Oh, I’m so glad you’re okay…”_

_“That was a bloody fright, mate…”_

But when he realizes not a single person mentions _Regulus_ , the voices and the hugs and the pats on his shoulder fade into the same hurricane of sensation, whirling around him. He thinks he can hear someone—probably Hermione, oh now the guilt is coming back—crying earnestly, “We’re sorry, Harry.”

He doesn’t know why everyone’s acting this way. He can’t focus on any of the hands coming at him as he makes his ways to the stairs, back to Percy’s cold and empty room.

Distantly, he hears himself say, “I’m sorry, I’ll come down very soon, I promise,” and lets the swirl of shame and grief and sounds and touches carry on.

In the eye of the storm, all he can focus on is the fact that he’s now in charge of the weirdest, craziest, ghost-hostage situation he could have ever imagined, that he’s the _only_ person who can see the ghost, that the ghost is a Death Eater with no apparent attachment point other than _Harry_ , that it’s Sirius’s Death Eater brother, that it’s _Sirius’s_ _dead_ _little_ _brother_.

He doesn’t remember the trip up the stairs—doesn’t count the creaks the way he usually does, full of affection and longing for a different home and family.

The door closes behind him, and Regulus’s ghost drifts in the corner as if he can barely believe it himself, and the fragile joking denial that Harry constructed at Grimmauld finally cracks to let in reality, and the hurricane is silent, and it’s gone, and Harry, Harry, _Harry,_ finally succumbs to the panic.

✷

The Weasleys can’t see him.

Regulus knows exactly whose house he’s landed in, not because the Potter boy had called the man “Mr. Weasley,” but because no other family has hair quite as burningly, painfully _red_ as the Weasleys.

Unless, of course, some other ginger came into the wizarding world and started their own little ginger pack in the past _seventeen years_ because, after all, it’s not as if Regulus would know any better. It’s been _seventeen damn years_ of being unconscious.

He’s still reeling. Life doesn’t feel real. Though it’s not exactly…life.

Since he isn’t alive.

Right. He’s still kind of stuck on that part—the whole “I’m not alive” thing.

(If he thinks about it for too long, about the fact that he’s dead but conscious, that he’s _been_ dead and _unconscious_ for almost two decades before Death dragged him back to the surface, his mind blanks and he feels like he’ll puke. Can ghosts puke?)

But, anyway.

The Weasleys can’t see him. Regulus supposes he shouldn’t be surprised; after all, “Mr. Weasley” wasn’t able to see him, so why should anyone else?

But that begs the question, why is _Harry Potter_ , the son of his brother’s _chosen_ family, able to see him?

He’s only had maybe half an hour to acquaint himself with the Potter—and he’s yet to discover the odd magic that has tied them together—but he can already tell that there’s something off.

He noticed this during their conversation. Or argument? First, Regulus isn’t used to interacting so directly with people untrained in high society. Sirius was an exception because he deliberately chose to be wild, shedding his highborn habits as thoroughly as he could, but even he could temper his most vulnerable reactions.

Potter, on the other hand, is remarkably open. He couldn’t hide a single emotion on that face—not his anger, his confusion, or his disgust. Regulus was used to the calm, collected, reserved natures of pureblood society. There, people didn’t usually express themselves so openly, and Potter’s tumble through the entire emotional spectrum made it difficult for Regulus to keep up even as he tried his best, despite being in the process of losing his own mind.

Because, _hello,_ he’s kind of _here_ and _thinking_ when he’s supposed to be _dead_.

(And Sirius is dead, and Mother is probably dead too, and the war actually _ended_ , and the Dark Lord died but then came back, and there’s a _new_ war, and the world is an unknown danger, he’s displaced, he’s lost, he’s a _ghost_ , and _Sirius_ is _dead_ …)

Regardless, Potter’s face at Grimmauld Place was unmasked, untrained, and whether he was joking or lashing out there didn’t seem to be an ounce of deception.

Was it adrenaline?

Because now, as Harry Potter walks through the mob of Weasleys, none of that openness is there.

He keeps his head down, and he mumbles his greetings and excuses without emotion. Regulus can barely hear him over the apologies and the worrying.

But though Regulus’s attention is constantly diverted by their loud panic—as well as his own buzzing anxiety—he can’t look away from Potter as he moves through them. The way he walks without looking and looks without seeing, taking their glancing touches of concern without feeling—he drifts through their arms like a spectre.

Unbidden, he remembers the odd conversation that Harry had with the older Weasley before Flooing here to this…cottage. What were they talking about? The Potter was obviously trying to explain Regulus, but the Weasley kept interrupting him with incongruous replies, insinuating a different secret at work.

 _What’s wrong with this boy?_ Regulus wonders distantly.

Finally, they reach the stairs, and Regulus looks back at the family’s faces. For a moment his breath catches as he observes the way their gazes are fixed on Harry, completely ignorant of his presence among them. _So, nothing new there,_ he thinks, and then he shoves the thought away and lets his body drift after Potter on his slow ascent up the creaky staircase.

Near the top, Potter is probably already too far to hear, but Regulus can catch the whispers from below.

_“Oh dear, do you think we pushed too hard?”_

_“Oh, I’m so glad you’re okay…”_

_“Does he need more space…?”_

Why do they treat him like he’s fragile? Like a cracked vase that’s been glued back together but can fall to pieces with the slightest nudge?

Who is he, and what’s _wrong_ with him?

He drifts through the closed door and blinks away the surprise at yet another reminder that, _hello, you’re a ghost now and you can walk through walls!_ to find Harry slumped against the door and breathing hard.

Regulus doesn’t know what to say to him. The sight of another person’s panic is rapidly reminding him of his own situation.

Throughout life, he’s had many moments of sudden breathlessness, when his mind went numb and his hands shook. In fact, he’s been on the edge of one ever since he dropped in the middle of nowhere, consciousness materializing in front of his family tapestry, slowly and fuzzily as if waking up from a meaningless dream.

His go-to method for stuffing those moments away—because _a Black cannot afford to be weak, you hear me, Regulus?_ —has always been hyper-fixating on his surroundings. A random passage from a book, perhaps, or often other people’s dilemmas.

And for the past half hour, aside from getting a few necessary answers, he’s been fixated on this strange black-haired teenager who can’t be more than two years younger than him, this strange person with whom he has some unfathomed magical connection.

But the fixating his problems away is not going to work for much longer.

Regulus shuts out the sound of Harry’s breathing, shuts out his unfamiliar surroundings, and tilts himself towards the window and the open outdoors. He needs to get away from all this.

Regulus closes his eyes as he passes through, unwilling to face the barrier just like the first time he went through Platform 9 ¾ when he closed his eyes and bit his tongue, fearful of expectation and his own unworthiness, of running into the literal wall. Even now he’s unwilling to drown his own cowardice when he _knows_ Sirius had faced the platform and would face this barrier too—the way he faced everything—with his eyes open and heart thrown wide.

Regulus knows he’ll never be like his brother. Perhaps the only thing they ever had in common was being alive, and now that they’re finally both dead, Regulus isn't even in the same plane of existence.

So he keeps his eyes shut, empties his mind, and he leaves his problems unfixed behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is - is this - is this okay is this okay
> 
> you may find me on [tumblr](https://firefork.tumblr.com/) where all i do is reblog bad jokes at the expense of zuko and some pretty pieces of art


	3. Barminess Calls for Friendly Intervention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, friends are amazing, and they try to help you through your crisis. Sometimes, they _give_ you the crisis.
> 
> Other times, they do both.
> 
> Unfortunately for everyone involved, Harry is spectacularly horrible at understanding his own emotions, and anything he does only makes things worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the next two weeks, i have to lug myself across the country, take four consecutive covid-19 tests, unpack my life, and start class. fun times! luckily im going to be trapped inside with nothing to do but sleep or write :') also, thank you everyone for the feedback <3 im immensely grateful :] now here, *throws long chapter at you*

Regulus finds himself floating.

 _This is…really strange,_ he thinks as he lets himself drift to the ground from several stories above. At this point, he feels like he’s been saying that to himself every other second, and he supposes he really should have expected all the floating and the drifting and the gliding.

It’s just that he never paid much attention to the ghosts when he was at Hogwarts; in fact, he avoided them completely.

Maybe a part of him always knew he’d be too weak to just die cleanly and simply, and so he never let himself face the examples of his eventual fate. He hasn’t ever allowed himself to imagine being a ghost the way everyone else has at some point in their lives.

Because when he slashed his hand open and bled on stone, when he rowed himself across that lake and knelt to poison, he _knew_ he wasn’t going to survive. He knew he would die, and he’d hoped that maybe, at last, he could do something right—right by his own standards, his own wishes, his own _will_ , and then, he could be at peace…

But then he wakes up. Here. Seventeen years post-mortem. And now he’s floating through an empty field in the countryside, scoping out his surroundings like some runaway criminal.

Everyone knows what the most common reason is for the dead to become ghosts: it’s regret. If the dying has an unfulfilled wish or a grievance strong enough to overwhelm the acceptance of death, the regret can hold them back from the barrier and strand their souls on Earth, tying them to a geographic attachment point. For the Bloody Baron and the other Hogwarts ghosts, the attachment point is obviously Hogwarts.

Regulus, though…

But he can’t spare a moment to even consider that his attachment point might be a _human_ —which is unheard of—because to acknowledge _that_ train of thought is to accept that he’s conscious and that he’s a _ghost_.

 _Excellent_ , he thinks to himself as he floats his way across the wide, boundless fields surrounding the crooked cottage house behind him. _I can’t even die correctly_.

All his life, failure after failure, flaw after flaw—incompetence for his parents, meekness for the Death Eaters, cowardice for his brother. Is the culmination of those three flaws really so strong that he couldn’t just pass on? He’d walked to his death with acceptance in his heart. So why is he still here? What could possibly be keeping him back from oblivion? What can’t he just _die already?_

 _I’m a Black_ , Regulus thinks hysterically, reciting the one of many mantras his mother had taken care to drill into his head. _Blacks don’t become ghosts. Blacks don’t have regrets. Blacks leave nothing unfinished. We take care of our business and leave with dignity, and those with no dignity will serve the family line well to hide from sight. They will drown in an eternity of misery and dishonour._

He can feel himself shaking, and he bites his tongue in anger at the physical evidence of his own _weakness_. He knows he’s shaking because he’s panicking, because he doesn’t know how he’s found himself in this situation and doesn’t know how to get out, but he’s also…so _cold_.

Somehow, he knows this isn’t a side effect of being a ghost. For the first time since coming back to the land of living, he chances a look down at his clothing, which he’d been deliberately ignoring.

It’s wet. All of it. He can’t feel the sensation of wetness against his skin even as he feels desperately cold, but he can tell as he inspects his robes that they’re sopping, completely waterlogged from – from—

Regulus shudders, and he slowly, cautiously pulls the hem of the wide sleeve up from his wrist. As soon as he sees the stark ring of bruises, he jerks the cloth back down and stares resolutely up at the sky.

 _Inferi_.

He may have come to terms with the idea of being a ghost, even as he actively reviles the idea. A part of him has even started to accept that the only person who can see him is some emotionally unstable teenager who killed the Dark Lord as an infant, mingles with blood traitors, and gets treated like glass.

He _has_ to be quick to get used to things that he hates. He wouldn’t have survived his upbringing otherwise.

(He’s even managed to quell the fear that the Dark Lord has not only died but _returned_. That perhaps Kreacher hadn’t succeeded in the impossible task regrettably set before him. That perhaps his own betrayal was all in vain…)

But he cannot, he _will not_ , think about his death. Being dead, as he’s realized quite quickly ever since ghosting back into existence, is a very different thing from death itself. A single thought of one of those bony, strong, mottled grey fingers, the sightless eyes, the thin, flowing hair and endless dark and blue then black, and water in his lungs—

A part of his mind shrieks _NO_ and then promptly shuts off.

Regulus shivers even as the glaring sunlight bears down on him, a damp coldness seeping from his core to the rest of his body. He coughs lightly, a phantom wetness echoing in his lungs and throat, and brings his face into his sleeve by habit.

But, with this action, as soon as he looks down from the sky, he automatically finds himself confronted with another problem.

Regulus _swears_ he was walking away from the house, past the yard and the patches and the several gnarled trees. But here he is, standing at the fence and facing the front door, the fields at his back instead of sprawling out before him.

_What?_

He turns around and glides back into the fields, away from the house, as fast as can. If he had a heartbeat, he imagines it would be hammering away.

Just when it feels like he’s gotten far enough, the details of the house behind him going blurry, he blinks. A moment passes, and he feels a pull from within him to go _back_.

Strangest of all, it doesn’t feel against his will. Like his mind and soul have colluded with some force that draws him back to some mysterious epicentre. It can’t be the house, or he would have felt this tug at Grimmauld Place.

As much as he wants to deny it, magical intuition rings within him: the tug can only be Harry Potter.

Regulus snarls vengefully at the realization that he can’t just leave the boy willingly. He’d hoped that maybe he had no attachment point, but this inexplicable magnetic pull is a reminder that his soul may truly be attached to a _human_ instead of a place—and also a reminder that he really is a ghost.

It probably isn’t the case though, is it? His main regret is probably the Horcrux. Of course it is. All he needs to do is to find Kreacher, verify its destruction, or destroy it if it’s still around. So why bother with the boy at all?

But if eighteen years of life had taught him anything, it had taught him to be obedient until he can find a way out. And if Magic demands his compliance, far be it from him to trifle with her wishes.

He lets the magic tug at him and draw him back in, back to the boy who ended the Dark Lord, the boy who did what Regulus could not do himself.

✷

Harry sits on Percy’s old bed, numb and so drained that he can’t even muster the energy to feel embarrassed at how he’d disrespected his friends. He cringes again as he replays himself pushing them away, along with their good intentions and loving concern, and then storming up the stairs like some moody teenager. Which he is, but that isn’t the point. His head is so stuffed with sheer nothingness that there’s no more space for guilt.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed, but the sun is now high up in the sky. It must only be noon, and yet it already feels like the longest day in existence. His face burns at the realization that he hasn’t even spent a full day at the Burrow, and yet he’s already caused a scene.

 _Way to go, Potter,_ he thinks bitterly. _You’re a right natural attention-seeker, aren’t you?_

Out of nowhere, he feels compelled to look back at the window. He flinches backwards as, at that very moment, Regulus Black comes gliding into the room. He must be coming back from what must have been an attempt to leave Harry behind, and the idea of that is…kind of offensive.

(It’s not that he _wants_ another problem in his life, but it’s not exactly high on his bucket list to get abandoned by yet another Black.)

They make awkward eye contact, but both look away immediately. As Harry surveys his sleeves intently, he suddenly realizes: _How did I know to look up just now?_ He shakes his head and refocuses his thoughts on Regulus but keeps his eyes trained downwards.

“Finally returned from trying to escape, I see,” Harry says dryly. He’s counting the threads coming apart at the hem of his robes, but he can already imagine the expression of annoyance on Regulus’s face. This gives him an obscene amount of satisfaction.

“Escape? I was just trying to give you some _privacy_ ,” Regulus hisses quietly, and Harry is suddenly reminded of his little breakdown. He’d stopped thinking about his own misery so fast at the sight of the ghost that he’d forgotten why he’d left in the first place.

Harry feels a jolt of embarrassment. _Oh yeah. He saw…that._

“Uh – thanks, I guess,” Harry says awkwardly.

“ ‘ _Thanks,_ ’ ” Regulus parrots, unamused, and it takes Harry too many seconds to realize he’s _mocking_ him. Harry is very affronted.

“Is it not polite to say thank you? I thought you purebloods had etiquette lessons.”

“Of course,” Regulus replies as if that weren’t something entirely posh and pratty to admit. “But how does one just say ‘ _thanks’_ so casually to someone who’s witnessed you during something like – _that._ ” Regulus’s pale, shimmery face is coloured by the slightest tinge of red, and _oh God,_ Harry realizes. _He’s **blushing**. I didn’t even know ghosts could blush._

Harry would laugh at how easily flustered the ghost is if he weren’t flustered himself. He’d love to crawl into a hole and never leave because, with a jolt, he’s realized that he’s been more vulnerable in front of this ghost, whom he’s known for less than an hour, than he ever has in front of his friends. He feels like a live wire, exposed and sparking.

Though it’s not like he hasn’t witnessed the ghost’s vulnerability either. Harry blinks away the image of Regulus’s face, so like Sirius’s, twisted into an expression of utter devastation upon hearing the date, a declaration of being so inexorably lost that no cry for help could fix it.

“Uh…” he starts, looking for any topic to clear the air of mutual awkwardness. “So, how old are you?”

Regulus looks uncharacteristically relieved at the inquiry.

“I suppose I’d be thirty-five if I hadn’t died, but I’m dead, so. Eighteen.”

“You seem awfully comfortable with being dead for an eighteen-year-old,” Harry remarks as casually as he can with all his nonexistent social abilities.

“Why shouldn’t I be comfortable with being dead? One would think even death can become a habit after seventeen years of it.”

“Well, yeah, but you weren’t _awake_ for it.”

“Even so,” Regulus sniffs. “It’s rude to assume how a dead person should feel about being dead. It’s not like _you_ would know how it feels to be properly, completely dead with no way of getting your life back,” he says, but his tone transitions from combative to curious as he asks, “How _would_ you feel?”

Harry blinks. “Well…I dunno. I don’t want to die.”

“Really. That’s all you have to say? And here I thought you had some grand hypothesis in mind.”

“What else do you want me to say?” Harry says heatedly. “I’m turning sixteen in a few weeks; I’m hardly experienced with death.”

Regulus, who remembers Harry admitting to being the infant slayer of the Dark Lord, levels a flat glare at him. Harry winces as he also remembers this conversation.

“Okay, maybe that wasn’t such a good excuse. Then, I guess…” he trails off. Harry thinks carefully. The sunlight is still pouring in from Percy’s paned window, unimpeded by Regulus’s phantom body, and it washes the room in a warm glow that’s comforting instead of irritating, thanks to the cooling charms. Birdsong trills quietly in the background. “I guess I don’t really want to die. But an eternity of peace and quiet doesn’t sound so bad,” he concludes honestly.

Harry had meant for this to come out jokingly, but the tone falls too close to contemplative and nowhere near sarcastic. They both wince as they realize that the conversation is veering back into dangerous territory.

“So! Onto more important things,” Harry says with cheer even though his face is grimacing. Regulus must have noticed because he grimaces right back. “Why are you still following me around?”

“You’re the only person who can see me. Surely, leaving would be against my best interests.”

“Yeah, but it’s definitely in _my_ best interests. _Shoo_ , Death Eater.”

Regulus shoots up from his prim seat on the windowsill, floating several feet above the floor. “Did you just _shoo_ me like an insect?” he demands imperiously, but Harry isn’t scared.

“You fly and you make noise,” he replies triumphantly. “You can’t hurt me, so, _shoo_.”

Regulus snarls and makes a slashing motion at Harry, who stubbornly stays as still as possible, because what kind of Gryffindor would he be otherwise? But he fails miserably when he feels a wash of horrible, blood-freezing coldness sweep through him as soon as Regulus makes contact.

“ _Hey!”_ Harry yelps. He backpedals into the bed to avoid the next vengeful poke that’s coming _right at him_ because _Jesus,_ he does _not_ want to feel that ever again. Who knew ghosts could be so cold? Harry had walked through his fair share of ghosts in the halls at Hogwarts, but he’d underestimated just how much more _freezing_ they could be when angry.

Suddenly Regulus retracts, looking vaguely ashamed of himself.

“That wasn’t very pureblood of you,” Harry says, receiving a fierce glare in response.

“I have _never_ met a person as thoroughly antagonizing as _you_ in my entire life, and I lived with _Sirius_ for most of it.”

“I’ll take that a compliment,” Harry grins, and his heart does a happy little flip at the comparison even though he’s sure the ghost meant it as an insult. “Now, I’m sure you don’t want to be around me just as much as I don’t want to be around you. Why can’t you leave?”

Regulus casts him a dark look and begins explaining his experiment with trying to get as far from the Burrow as possible when he was scoping out his surroundings. Harry feels the horror slowly return as he listens, ignoring the snide comments about how much Regulus does not want to be spiritually attached to the moody spawn of James Potter. Harry’s too busy thinking that he himself does not want to be spiritually attached to the moody spawn of the House of _Black_ if it’s not – if it’s not Sirius.

“So we’re stuck with each other,” Harry concludes mournfully.

“Not if I can help it,” Regulus responds mildly. Harry’s vaguely discomfited to find that he actually _agrees_ with Regulus on something for once, but it’s purely rational that he very reasonably does not want to go about the rest of his life with an enemy _ghost_ following him around.

“Oh yeah? Well, do you have any ideas?” Harry asks.

“Yes.”

“Ohhh-kay… Do you plan on sharing them any time soon?”

“I’m still gauging whether or not I should trust you for this,” Regulus says intently.

Harry rolls his eyes. “Come on, you’re already dead, _and_ no one can see you. What’s the worst that can happen at this point?” Harry says this jokingly, but his good humour quickly falls when he sees Regulus’s expression.

“More than you can even imagine,” Regulus says ominously, and he leaves it at that.

It’s unnerving how still the ghost is when, so far, he’s been bobbing up and down even when staying in place. And his eyes do not waver from the keen, calculating stare that he’s been aiming at Harry ever since he’d admitted to not wanting to be stuck if he could help it. His gaze is cold, and Harry’s beginning to feel chills as if the cooling charms had somehow increased in strength in the past minute.

For the first time since discovering that ghosts exist, Harry feels a bit terrified of them.

“Don’t tell me you don’t trust me because of my dad,” Harry says, trying for humour again.

“Well…not completely. But I suppose that’s part of it, yes,” he responds distantly. Harry feels a pang of bitterness at the admission.

“I thought you said it was unkind to assume things about people. And here you are, assuming things about me based on parents when I never even got a chance to _know_ them,” he bites out.

Regulus inhales softly, his arms falling from where they were crossed so tensely. “The Dark Lord,” he murmurs with bated horror.

“Yeah, _Voldemort_. Who else?” Oddly, Harry notes, Regulus doesn’t flinch at the name when he did just an hour ago at Grimmauld Place. But he doesn’t get time to ponder this any further because Regulus is speaking again.

“I…apologize.”

“Uh. Sure,” Harry says gruffly. He doesn’t know how to deal with the foreign concept of being apologized to by a _pureblood_.

“I do want to clarify though,” Regulus continues, “that I wasn’t judging you based on James Potter. I was more occupied by the fact that he and Sirius were friends, and you knew Sirius quite well, I’d assume.”

“Not as well as I’d have liked,” Harry says, trying valiantly to not let his voice crack from the sudden dryness of his throat.

For a moment, Regulus seems confused by the idea that Harry didn’t actually know him well, but Harry doesn’t let himself think on the expression for any longer.

“What’s your problem with my dad anyway?” he says quickly when he sees Regulus open his mouth to ask something.

Regulus gives him a searching look before he appears to accept the abrupt change in topic.

“Nothing personal. Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well,” he says wryly. “I’m not in any particular need for your faith. I’m well and properly dead, as you can see.” He spreads his arms in a gesture that Harry interprets to mean _look, I’m all spiritual and ghostly and you can’t hurt me any more than I can hurt you._

Which is true. But he’s irritated, nonetheless. Still, he looks down to properly take in Regulus’s appearance for the first time since he’d appeared.

His hair is slightly longer and messier than it appeared in his portrait, but the piercing grey eyes and the regal Black bone structure is all there. His stature is smaller and slighter than Harry would have expected, since Sirius himself always seemed tall and sturdy and _present._ Regulus’s posture is similarly perfect, his spine straight, neck extended, and shoulders pulled back, but where Sirius emanated pride even when slouched, the boy in front of him appears almost delicate.

Like a bird waiting for its neck to get snapped.

Then he takes a closer look at his clothing, and he gulps to hold back a gasp.

Previously, he’d thought his robes were simply black, and underneath the robes were a black waistcoat layered over a white collared shirt. The slight gossamer effect of ghostly transparency had obscured the hues.

Now, though, as Regulus sits in the shadows, further away from the light streaming in, Harry can see that only his outer robe and his pants are black. What Harry had thought was a black waistcoat is not black but dove grey, so thoroughly soaked in blood that a passing glance could easily mark it off as black fabric. Which is exactly what Harry had done. But as he watches the folds in the fabric shift with Regulus’s hovering, he can recognize the tell-tale way in which the shirt seems to stick and resist gliding with air, pulled down by the friction of liquid. Of _blood_.

In fact, he’s beginning to realize that _all_ his robes seem to droop instead of drape, their movements stalled and sluggish from the weight of fluid. The glistening that seemed to twinkle sporadically around Regulus in the sunlight was not a ghostly aura but water droplets, falling and floating in hazy cycles. And upon closer inspection, the edges of the bloodstain spreading onto his shirt seem to be fuzzed out, as if drenched and soaked in water.

His robes are so dark—dark to the point where, aside from the white shirt, it’s impossible to tell just how much of the liquid is blood and how much is water.

In a slow, sickening second, it dawns on Harry that Regulus hasn’t stopped shivering _or_ coughing in the hours since they’ve met.

“You are rather unobservant for a supposed miracle child,” Regulus says. Harry swings his gaze back up to Regulus’s face with a jolt, realizing that he’s been silent for too long.

“What happened to you?” Harry asks in breathless horror.

Regulus gives him a pained, terribly false smile, and ignores the question.

“You were asking about your parents, yes?” he says pleasantly, but tension lingers ominously in his tone. Still shaken by the blatant evidence of death laid out before him, Harry goes along with the shift in conversation. He shouldn’t give up the opportunity for information about his parents, right? Not even for a dead person in pain who’s covered in blood and tragedy. Not for a person he’s known for less than a few hours. And _especially_ not for a Death Eater.

“Yeah,” Harry says shakily after taking a deep breath. “I was asking why you hate my dad.”

“I never said I hated him,” Regulus says plainly. Harry searches his face for anything contrary, but his expression is just as flat and guarded as ever. Privately, Harry thinks about how Snape wouldn’t have hesitated to profess his hatred, and then he remembers how unreadable the man is the rest of the time.

 _All these bloody Slytherins and their blasted secrecy,_ he groans in his head.

“I don’t believe you,” he responds, just to be petulant.

“And you still haven’t given me a reason to trust you,” says Regulus lightly.

“Well if you’re not going to trust me with your _plan_ for separating the two of us _,_ then I suppose you’re all right with following me around for the rest of your existence.”

“I can tell that you want me around even less than I want you around. Try again, Potter.”

“I can be stubborn if I want to, _Black_ ,” he responds combatively. “Watch me. I’m going to make sure I don’t go a single place you need to be. I can sell Grimmauld Place and make sure neither of us can ever go there again.”

Regulus’s expression twists from an amused smile into something so casually, habitually cruel.

“I might not know anything about your relationship with Sirius, or why the family downstairs treats you so carefully, or anything else about you, but I _do_ know that there was no one else in the house when that man came to get you. The only reason why you’d be sitting alone in the _drawing room_ with no guests to entertain, staring at an old wall of faces, is if something about that house remained invaluable to you. Isn’t that right?”

“What the _hell_ are you talking about—”

“You’re far too inexperienced to be bartering with a Slytherin, you poor, naïve Gryffindor. Even if you didn’t want to go anywhere to help me, I could manipulate you into it so easily. You don’t have any of the defences that we do, Potter. If you think sheer, bullheaded _bravery_ can get you out of doing what I want,” he laughs coldly, “then you are sorely mistaken.”

“God,” Harry whispers, shaking from shock, confusion, _rage_. “You really _are_ a Death Eater.” For a flash of a second, he notices the way Regulus freezes, but the observation melts away under the heat of his own anger.

“ _No_ , Potter, not a Death Eater. A member of the House of Black, _yes_. You have a long way before you could _ever_ understand the legacy that lives under the roof you now unwisely own,” he finishes quietly, sealing the air with anger, distrust, and tension.

At this, the coldness seems to seep out of his expression as it settles back into open placidity, and the temperature in the room seems to steadily warm up again.

“Now, I’ve decided to trust you,” Regulus says simply.

“What,” Harry snarls, “Not before, but _after_ threatening me like a _goddamn_ _snake?”_

“I can’t threaten you,” Regulus says honestly. “I’m just a ghost. I can’t even touch you.”

“That’s _not_ the _point_.”

“No, I suppose not,” he sighs. “I just think that, by now, you’ve probably recognized that it’s in both our best interests to help bring my soul back to where it belongs.”

He gives Harry a questioning look. Harry doesn’t respond, knowing that his silence is as good as agreement. He doesn’t trust what might come out of his mouth if he lets himself talk, what the anger and fear might make him say.

“Good,” Regulus says. “Now, I need you to bring me to Kreacher.”

“ _WHAT?”_ Harry bursts out.

“Quiet _down_ ,” he hisses. “If they hear you, they might come up.”

“Well _excuse me_ for trying to check my hearing. I’m not sure if I heard you right, but did you just ask me to bring you _Kreacher?”_

“No, I said bring me _to him._ We can’t have the house elf _here_ with all these strangers.”

Harry laughs weakly. “Yeah, sure, okay. Why not! Let’s go have a party with Kreacher. It’ll be so much fun!”

Regulus frowns. “Are we talking about the same elf? Old? Grouchy? Low voice and really small ears for a house elf?”

“Yes, of course! I was using SARCASM!”

“ _Shush!”_

“Harry, are – are you all right?” comes a nervous voice from downstairs that sounds like Hermione. Harry winces while Regulus fumes at him impressively, muttering, _I told you, I **told** you to be quiet and what do we get,_ over and over again.

“Yeah!” he calls back. “I’m fine! Just – just talking to myself!”

“You make a wonderful case for your own sanity, Potter,” Regulus snarks.

“Shut up,” he grits out, glaring at the ghost. “Speak for yourself. Why the hell do you want to talk to _Kreacher?”_

“Is there anything wrong with him?” Regulus asks coldly.

“No, of course not,” Harry says bitterly. “Only the fact that he’s a grouchy, old monster who wants everyone _dead!”_

“Don’t you _dare_ speak about Kreacher that way,” he hisses.

“How else am I supposed to speak about him? He wanted Sirius dead, and he got it! He just wants to serve Voldemort, and I bet he’ll turn his back on me the second he gets the _chance.”_

“You don’t understand him the way I do, and you never will if this is how you treat an innocent _house elf.”_

“Innocent?” Harry laughs. “He’s hardly _innocent_ , serving a house like that.”

“And, here,” Regulus growls lowly, “I thought those on Dumbledore’s side would never treat ‘lesser’ creatures with anything less than dignity. Are you not one of Dumbledore’s followers, _Potter?”_

“Don’t you speak to me about him,” Harry snaps, the familiar fear and disappointment and rage running back into his veins like a poisonous instinct that he can’t train away.

Regulus only smiles, a small, vindictive thing that chills Harry to the bone. He really needs to stop giving this secretive bastard any more ammunition.

“Back to what we were saying before you got distracted, Potter. I need to speak to Kreacher because he has the object that’s probably keeping me tied here. If you can get rid of it, I’ll be free, you’ll be free, and we’ll all be happy. Just take me to Grimmauld Place as soon as you can, get the item from Kreacher, destroy it, and that will be the end of this regretful partnership.”

Harry’s first reaction is to reject this deal vehemently, but he reminds himself that he would really rather be free and _rid_ of this vicious, cruel reminder of death.

He inhales and exhales slowly. “Deal.”

“Wonderful.”

“Now, I should probably go downstairs.”

A beat passes during which they just stare at each other.

“Do you need my permission?” Regulus says dryly.

Harry flushes. “No! Of course not.” He gets up from the bed and starts walking to the door.

“So, who are the Weasleys downstairs?”

Harry shoots him a look of surprise. “How did you know—”

“Oh, don’t insult me. No other family could have hair that red,” he says. “I’m not _stupid_ , Potter,” and he rolls his eyes so dismissively that Harry can’t help but be reminded of Malfoy, which makes a disturbing amount of sense because _holy shit_ they’re _cousins_. It’s such a fitting but unsettling thought that Harry mentally files it away in the ‘Unpack When Sane’ compartment—so, hopefully, never.

“Molly and Arthur Weasley,” Harry finally responds.

Regulus stops in his tracks so suddenly that he bobs around in place like a spring, which Harry watches with morbid curiosity. Ghost physics is _so_ weird.

“Why?” Harry asks. “Did you know them?”

Regulus visibly takes a deep breath. “No. But I’ve seen them in photos with my brother. They used to look…” His expression is an odd twist of distant pain and confusion. “…well. Seventeen years younger. I wouldn’t have recognized them, had you not said their names.”

Then he continues floating along, across the room and through the door, with such determination that Harry miraculously gets the hint even as his instincts are screaming ‘ _ASK_ _ABOUT THE PHOTO.’_ Because the only photo that Mrs. Weasley would have willingly taken with Sirius would have been for the Order.

But it’s been seventeen years, he’s still covered in blood, and even after that disaster of a conversation, Harry _still_ has enough stupid compassion for the ghost. For how lost and displaced he must feel at every reminder that he’s a relic out of time.

Harry drops the topic. A tentative alliance is better than nothing, after all.

✷

When Harry reaches the bottom of the stairs, eyes immediately turn to him. They’re huddled around each other on the couches and cushions, speaking to each other in low voices. If not for Christmas, Harry wouldn’t even remember the last time everyone actually _sat_ together in the sitting room instead of going outside to de-gnome the garden or play Quidditch.

The gnawing embarrassment and guilt comes back, curling in his stomach like a slow-acting poison. He can’t believe he let himself lose his head so quickly after coming to the Burrow, and he’d been _wanting_ to come here. Why is he being more of a crazy person _here_ than when he was cooped up on Privet Drive?

“This place is rather…quaint,” comes the smooth, judgmental voice from behind him. Harry clenches his jaw to resist reacting to Regulus’s uppity pureblood words.

Hermione stands up, visibly worried, and starts moving towards Harry before stopping right in front of him. Something about this irritates Harry, possibly the insinuation that he’s _delicate_ and emotionally _fragile_ , but he reins back the anger, arranges his expression into a smile, and open his arms awkwardly.

Soon, he has an armful of Hermione.

“Harry, we were so worried about you—you know Ron didn’t mean it that way—”

“I know, I know, hey,” he pulls back to look at her and gives her a sheepish grin. “I’m even sorrier. I shouldn’t have reacted like an angsty teenager and given you all a fright.”

“You _are_ an angsty teenager,” says Ron from where he’s standing up and approaching the two of them. He claps his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “You’ve been one since even before you were a teenager.”

Harry gives him a warm glare. “Hey, I resent that.”

Ron grins pleasantly. “Good—resentment is going to make you a better chess partner later,” he says, and Harry groans at the promise of a mental arse-kicking in his future.

Then he turns to the rest of the group. Ginny and Fleur are, unsurprisingly, sitting on opposite sides of the room, but otherwise they look like mirror images of each other, both sitting primly on the edge of a couch cushion, faces carefully expressionless. They probably feel uncomfortable with the vulnerability of the moment.

Harry doesn’t blame them. He kind of wants to be swallowed up by a black hole right this second, but you don’t always get what you want in life.

Then he looks at Mrs. and Mr. Weasley with immense hesitation, unwrapping himself from his friends’ limbs.

“I’m really sorry for making everyone worry,” he mumbles quietly.

“Oh, Harry,” Mrs. Weasley says in a fiercely emotional tone. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Come here.” Then she wraps him in a warm, suffocating hug that makes his eyes burn, which he’ll blame, if asked, on the strength of her squeezing.

Mr. Weasley gives him a pat on the shoulder, oddly reminiscent of Ron’s gesture.

“Luckily it didn’t take very long to find you,” he says pleasantly. “We’re lucky that your friends know you quite well.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles again. To this, Arthur looks vaguely panicked.

“No, no! Don’t apologize. We’ve already talked about this, yes? I just want to say, well, uh, you see this is a tad important, and as a responsible adult figure I am obligated to say so, but, uh…” Harry can almost see a bead of sweat roll down his temple.

Molly shoots Arthur a fierce glare that clearly communicates ‘ _stop waffling, you daft man,’_ and he clears his throat nervously.

“Well, it’s not a big thing really, we already talked about this back at Grimmauld Place. About the, well, what Dumbledore said. It’s safer if you stay here, Harry, really.”

A part of Harry freezes and revolts at the mention of Dumbledore even if he understands the good intentions.

“Right,” Harry says. “I actually…” he darts a nervous look out of the corner of his eye at Regulus, who’s been floating a small distance away from the group clustered around Harry. “I wanted to talk to you, actually. About that.”

“Oh,” he says, looking mildly surprised. “Of course, what’s on your mind?”

“Well… I just. I think I need to go back to Grimmauld Place more often. I’m not sure if Professor Dumbledore’s said anything about this, but Sirius – he, uh, put me in his will. For the house. And I think I need to, um, go back more often. To finish cleaning up.” He winces at his excuse because he knows it’s bad, and he knows that _Arthur_ knows it’s bad because now he’s frowning lightly at Harry.

“Surely, if you have the house, then you must have the old house elf too, Harry. To help, and all.” In the background, Hermione huffs at Arthur’s implication, which makes Harry feel slightly bad, but not bad enough.

“That’s true. It’s just…um…” he scrambles for more reasons and suddenly recalls the odd comment Regulus had made about the house when they were in the drawing room. _“The magic accepts only blood as long as there is blood to accept.”_

 _Of course,_ he realizes. _Old ancestral homes like that must have some sort of blood magic keeping them together…_

“The wards!” Harry says suddenly. “Sirius told me some things about the house before. There’s no more blood left in the main family branch, and since he passed it on to me, I have to be there to check on the magic because it’s probably keyed to me now. Like the, uh, wards. I know it’s underage magic! But it wouldn’t be safe for any of the Order if the magic started failing. Yeah. And also because it’s one of the last things I have. So.”

Arthur’s face melts into a much more sympathetic look at Harry’s fidgety, evasive explanation, and so does Molly’s.

“I understand, Harry,” Molly says gently, chiming into the conversation. “It’s just that it’s not entirely safe, and Dumbledore asked us to keep you here, with us. Letting you go alone into that house with all those – those _dark_ objects, and without anyone to help you in case anyone comes knocking seems rather dangerous.”

Harry silently cheers in his head. The hardest part was to get him to accept his half-baked excuses for underage magic as well as to understand that he needs to be _alone_ —because God knows how they would feel about Harry talking to empty air like a crazy person. Assuring them of his safety is much easier than explaining why he needs to do what he needs to do. He exhales quietly in relief.

“Oh, that shouldn’t be a concern at all, Mrs. Weasley. Dumbledore managed to hide Sirius in there for a whole year, right?” he says as pleasantly as possible. “And most of the dark objects are dealt with already. I know not to touch things that I don’t recognize, too, so it shouldn’t be an issue. And Kreacher! Kreacher can help me since he has to listen to me. And the house is under so many enchantments; no one would find me there. I’d be completely fine.”

“I’m still not completely sure… I would owl Dumbledore, but I’m afraid he’s gone abroad since last night…”

“That’s not necessary,” he says quickly and then flushes when he realizes how loud that came out. “I mean, Professor Dumbledore’s still the Secret-Keeper, right? There’s nothing safer than the Fidelius charm.”

“But James and Lily—” she says, then stops. Her face goes red, seemingly ashamed of what she’d just implied. “Oh dear, I don’t know what I was thinking, please forgive—”

“It’s okay,” Harry says quietly. “You’re not wrong, Mrs. Weasley. I just think Dumbledore would be much less likely to betray us than Pettigrew was to betray my parents.”

A disquieting silence settles upon them at these words.

“Oh, well, Arthur, I don’t see a problem with him popping in and out as long he only goes to Grimmauld Place…” Molly says, fidgeting with her apron.

“Thank you,” Harry says breathlessly. He feels slightly terrible for how he’d manipulated them with Sirius’s and his parents’ deaths, but it’s not like he could just come out and say ‘ _hey I have to go back because I have a ghost to deal with,’_ right?

“But you make sure you _only_ go there and nowhere else, young man,” she says sternly. “There and back, however often you need to get this business wrapped up. But _only_ there and back, you hear?”

“Of course,” he says amiably, beaming warmly. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Weasley.”

“You little bugger,” Regulus says quietly from the side. “You actually did it.”

Harry almost turns to give him a triumphant smirk, but he stops when he feels a hand pull on his arm and turns to see Hermione’s concerned face.

✷

“Hey, let’s go talk outside,” Hermione says. Harry agrees nervously and follows her and Ron out through the backdoor. Somehow, within his head, he knows that Regulus is following without needing to see his spirit.

As soon as the door swings shut behind him, he plops down onto the bench, and Hermione turns around, arms crossed and brow furrowed in concern.

“You never mentioned that you’d have to do this, Harry.”

“Well, I only just found out yesterday,” he says awkwardly.

“Sirius wouldn’t have put this information in a will though, would he?” she asks. Harry has no idea; law, magical or otherwise, makes no sense to him. Hermione seems to notice his confusion and answers for him. “Wills are available to different legal entities, so will-writers avoid putting any details about how to operate the listed possessions, especially if it’s something as sensitive as a noble house’s blood magic,” she explains. “So, Sirius must have told you about this in person.”

“I can’t decide if I respect her or dislike her,” Regulus says dolefully.

“Oh. Yeah,” Harry replies, ignoring Regulus’s unheard comment. “He talked to me about it before. Just a bit.”

Hermione’s expression softens into something incredibly sad at his words, and he panics a little at the sight of it.

“How come you didn’t share something like this with us, Harry? This is a lot of responsibility, and we want to be here for you even if you have to go alone.”

“Oh, lay off the poor sod,” Ron chimes in. “It’s not like we knew what was going to happen at the Ministry, so he couldn’t have known he’d have to deal with the old house.”

Harry breathes out a sigh of relief. “Yeah,” he agrees, hopping onto the convenient excuse because there’s _no_ way he’ll admit to such a huge lie. “That’s why I wasn’t able to tell you guys. It didn’t occur to me until this morning.” He looks down at the scuff marks on his jeans. “Sorry,” he says quietly.

Above his head, Ron and Hermione share a look.

“You say sorry way too much, mate,” Ron points out.

“I do?” he says as he looks up, startled by the observation, before jerking his head back down. “Sorry…”

“Oh God, I think the condition is too advanced for a cure, Hermione,” Ron says jokingly, but there’s an undertone of concern that makes Harry feel like a goldfish in a bowl.

Ron stays standing in front of him, but Hermione sits down next to Harry and takes his elbow in her hand.

“Harry, Ron and I have been meaning to talk to you about this because we noticed it in your letters, but we didn’t want to scare you by writing about it on paper.”

“About what…?” he asks cautiously.

“You’re barmy, mate,” Ron says bluntly.

“ _Ronald!”_

“What? You were taking too long to get to the point,” he grumbles. “Sorry, Harry,” when he notes Harry’s annoyed expression. “What we mean is that you’re obviously…not okay. Which is totally understandable! We’ve all been feeling down, but you were the closest to him, so, yeah. We get it. But it’s just…some of the things in the letters you’ve been writing…” Ron hesitates. “Like that time when I asked you how you feel about black-coloured Liquorice Wands…”

“…and you sent him three feet rambling about how black is actually a shade, not a colour, and if it were a colour, then it would be the worst colour on Earth because it’s already the worst shade too. Black, black, black, all across the letter. You don’t even write that much for _Defence_ , Harry.”

“Like, mate, we were just asking if you wanted to try the new flavour,” Ron says painfully.

“And also,” Hermione continues, on a roll now, “that time I wrote you about a nice dog I saw on a walk, and you wrote back within the hour about the nice _cat_ I saw and how dogs on sidewalks at nighttime are symbols of hope and that Trelawney is full of it about the Grim. Far be it from me to disagree, Harry, but it was awfully strange; it’s almost as if you were trying to convince yourself. I couldn’t tell if you were joking…”

“And you’ve been using every possible synonym for ‘serious’ just to avoid using the actual word. I get it, but it’s just – come on, mate, _‘profound’?”_

“Well, I actually quite adore that word—”

“Yeah, Mione, but you don’t go around saying, ‘ _yes, I’m being completely profound about this,’_ do you now? It’s totally different from going off the rails and ranting about anything that reminds you of—"

“Okay! Okay, I get it,” Harry interrupts loudly. “I got it. I’m being weird. I’m sorry.”

“And _that_.”

“That what?”

“Your whole ‘sorry,’ thing,” Ron clarifies. “You’ve always been a really diligent apology-giver—no, shut up, I’ve known you and lived in the same room as you for _five years_ already, you _do not_ get to deny this—but I swear that you’ve been saying it like ten times more often. I counted them in your last four-foot letter about cats. _Nineteen times_ , mate. Nineteen _bloody_ times.”

“What he means,” Hermione interjects, “is that we feel like you’re having a bit of a…guilt issue.”

“A guilt issue,” Harry repeats nervously.

“What happened at the Ministry wasn’t your fault, Harry,” she says softly.

Harry swallows thickly. “I know.”

“No, I’m not sure you do.” Her tone is still so gentle, so loving. The air around them feels so cloistering, so thick and humid that Harry almost feels he can’t breathe.

“All right,” he says, humouring their theory. “So what?”

“We just feel like…maybe you could use some help. I have books that I can lend you. I could write summaries, if you think they might be too depressing to read.”

“Are you telling me that I’m crazy?”

Hermione shares a nervous look with Ron before speaking.

“Having a low point in mental health isn’t crazy, Harry. It’s normal. People have gone through low points without ever having endured what you’ve had to endure. And you’ve experienced a very personal tragedy. Feeling depressed _isn’t crazy_.”

Very quickly, an image of Aunt Petunia forms in Harry’s mind. He was about nine or ten, staring at the row of misshapen tin soldiers inside his cupboard when he heard her ranting about their neighbour. Apparently, she was getting ‘treatment,’ but not at a hospital. She had to take pills, stay at home, and go to someone called a ‘counsellor’ in order to get better, but she didn’t have the flu, or a cold, or cancer. According to Aunt Petunia’s high, cold voice, she had this disease called _depression_ , which was something that only crazy people and ‘freaks’—like murderers, rapists, and divorcees—could get.

He’d known by then not to trust anything Aunt Petunia says about ‘normal’ people. But a lifetime of hearing the same thing over and over with no one else to tell him right from wrong messes up some things.

“Okay,” he finally responds.

“Okay?” Hermione asks tentatively.

“Yeah, sure,” he shrugs.

“So, you’re willing to read those books?” Her voice sounds so hopeful that he can’t bring himself to say no.

“If it makes you happy, Hermione, then sure.”

She gives him a frustrated look. “This isn’t to make me happy, Harry. This is to help _you_.”

“I’ll, um, take one. I’ll try to read it.” When she gives him a baleful glare, he quickly adds, “I promise.”

Hermione’s face breaks into the sunniest smile he’s seen on her ever since Umbridge got trampled by centaurs, and he can’t help but feel like he’s made the right decision even though his heart isn’t really in it.

“I’m so proud of you Harry,” Hermione says excitedly, wrapping him into another tight hug and a faceful of hair. “I’ll go up and get you that book right now. Come on, Ron.”

“You did good, mate!” Ron calls out as he lets himself get pulled inside.

Harry slumps back against the wall and rests his palms on the wood of the bench, beside his thighs, and he takes a deep breath, unsure of what just happened. Oddly, he felt like he was floating, watching the situation from above, detached and uninvolved even as his body spoke and responded the way it should have.

He turns his head away from where his gut tells him the ghost is floating, unwilling to face his unwelcome observer.

“I won’t say anything,” Regulus says anyway.

“You’re saying something right now,” Harry replies quietly, keeping his voice low enough to not draw attention.

They fall silent again as Hermione comes bounding back out, an unexpectedly thin book in hand.

“Here you go Harry. I decided to just go with a really small guide on grief for now because I don’t want to overwhelm you and all. It’s really short, I promise it’s very accessible, and if you have any questions don’t hesitate—"

“Is that a _Muggle_ book?” Regulus asks in quiet fascination. Harry can’t tell how much pureblood disgust is in there because Hermione’s still talking.

“—to ask me, don’t hesitate at all. We’re going to get through this together Harry,” she finishes. Harry looks up and is immediately alarmed at the way her eyes glisten. She swipes at them with her wrist quickly and beams at him. “I’ll see you later. I’m so happy for you, really,” she says, and she swiftly turns on her heel to go back inside.

Harry cracks open the thin book and bites back an instinctive grin. It’s one of those children’s books with big words and colourful pictures, just on a much darker topic. Anyone else may be offended at being handed a children’s book, but Harry appreciates it, and he appreciates how Hermione understands him well enough to know that he would appreciate it.

He just wishes he had the courage to actually read it. But he can’t, even if he didn’t have a stranger lurking over his shoulder.

“You didn’t see anything. Or, well, hear,” Harry says quietly, swallowing down the fury and humiliation that’s burning deep within him.

Without checking to see if Regulus follows, Harry opens the porch door and walks back inside to the smothering love of friends and family, willing himself to forget the fact that all he wants is to finally be _alone_.

✷

All day, and into the night, his chest feels heavy. He can’t explain it. No matter how high he flies in the mini Quidditch match they play, no matter how many chores he helps Mrs. Weasley with, or how much potato he forces himself to eat during dinner, the buzzing and the god-awful weight on his heart just won’t leave.

Maybe it’s the fact that Regulus is unnervingly quiet. Harry doesn’t exactly _want_ a reminder of his presence by having him talk, but knowing that he’s there and having no auditory evidence of it is _freaky_. Every so often, Harry would turn around and nearly jump out of his skin at the sight of Regulus’s bloody robes and narrowed, intense grey eyes, staring at Harry in unblinking observation.

Maybe it’s the fact that, when he does get a private moment to talk, all his interrogations of Regulus’s magical knowledge on ghosts repeatedly run into walls, and it’s clear that he doesn’t know any more about the subject than he’s already explained. Harry wants desperately to just ask Hermione for help, but something about the whole situation is holding him back from confessing.

Maybe it’s the fact that, at no point in the foreseeable future will he ever find a moment of true solace.

Maybe, it’s Hermione’s book.

Oh, God. It’s definitely Hermione’s book.

Or, rather than her book, it’s the conversation they had on the porch.

Ever since Ron and Hermione’s little confrontation, he’s been thinking about it nonstop. The words “depressed” and “crazy” and “unwell” keep circling through his head like little twittering birds, like they could mean something, but his brain just can’t seem to fathom their significance. Every time he tries to think about it, the image of Aunt Petunia comes back full force, and he forgets his train of thought.

Or another person calls for him, and he forgets his train of thought again, and again.

Or he catches sight of Regulus, and he completely loses semblance of mind. He hasn’t met Regulus’s gaze since talking to Hermione, ashamed at the forced intrusion of privacy and the ominous inescapability of their unfathomed magical bond.

Because _of_ _course_ he gets attached to a ghost. Or a ghost gets attached to him. Of course, this is what the world decides to do to him. Never a normal year. Never a time when he can just be in peace, when he doesn’t have to be in existential fear of magic and its strange operations. And now he’s promised to take said ghost to see _Kreacher_ and endure Kreacher’s hatred for Sirius and Kreacher’s goddamn loyalty to the entire legacy that _killed_ Sirius.

The adrenaline thrums through him, and the tension between Harry and Regulus remains a steady presence through the night, rising and rising through the restless cycles of sleeping and waking until the sun finally peaks its head over the horizon.

The clock reads six, a shadow shifts, and something clicks in Harry’s mind.

Later, he’ll realize that it’s the addled clarity that comes with the dawn that follows insomnia. The stress. The _desperation_ for an answer. The sudden change from Privet Drive to Burrow, from uselessness to _being_ used by Dumbledore as a card against Slughorn; from ‘Freak’ to ‘Chosen One,’ from nothingness to everything—his fame, his responsibilities. The never-ending, smothering concern of his friends, the abrupt arrival of Regulus, the constant reminder of _Sirius_.

But, for now, he revels in a sudden revelation.

Slowly but surely, he rubs his eyes and rises from his pitiful attempt at sleep. Regulus shakes alert from his own attempt at napping even though he’d confessed hours earlier that he didn’t feel tired at all and watches, bemused, as Harry changes into Muggle clothing, grabs his wand, his Invisibility Cloak, and his empty school bag, dumping Hermione’s book inside.

“Christ,” Regulus whispers when he sees the time. “You didn’t strike me as an early riser. What in the world are you doing?”

But Harry ignores him, wordlessly tugging Regulus along through the bond as he makes his way quietly down the stairs, avoiding all the creaky steps he’d lovingly committed to memory through the years. He scribbles a quick note— _‘Gone to Grimm. Pl.’_ —and pins it under an inconspicuous mug on the kitchen table as if hoping it wouldn’t be noticed. Then, he heads to the empty sitting room.

“Number 12, Grimmauld Place,” he calls out quietly, and with a fistful of powder and a tumble, he appears right back on the rug where he was just under 24 hours prior.

Regulus is delighted at Harry’s apparent commitment to his promise.

“Oh, wonderful, now let’s go find Kreacher and—”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Harry says.

Regulus is silent for a moment before whispering, “ _What?”_

“I’ve changed my mind,” Harry repeats calmly. “This situation is absolutely insane, don’t you think? Don’t you feel like we’ve accepted it a bit too easily? That book Hermione gave me inspired me. I think we’re both in denial,” he says firmly despite knowing he’d only caught sight of one word on a random page when he flipped through it the first and only time.

“Denial?” Regulus scoffs. “Whatever for?”

Harry swallows. “For Sirius.”

Regulus is silent.

“You heard Hermione,” Harry continues. “Something’s wrong with me. About Sirius. Apparently, I’m not reacting the way I should. And she thinks I should fix myself. She tends to be right, so I should probably listen to her.” He looks up at Regulus, making eye contact for the first time since Hermione pulled him outside and declared that he needs help, pushing aside the humiliation and naked vulnerability that burns and burns.

Harry takes a deep breath before finishing the thought. “I think…that if I do what she says, and if you follow along, then maybe you’ll go away, and we’ll be free of each other.”

Regulus stares back with an unreadable expression, masked by several layers of conflict and frustration. _That’s not why I’m stuck here,_ he thinks to himself privately, but Harry doesn’t know that.

“You _dare_ lump me in the same group as you. _Fixable_ by some Muggle solution.”

Harry glared. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? Why else would I be stuck with you? A ghost? And you’ve been telling me all day that this stuff just doesn’t happen, and I can’t ask Hermione about it, and I sure as hell can’t look through your creepy library because it might bite my hand off, so I may as well trust you. It has to be Sirius. It’s the only thing we have in common. It has to make sense because Dumbledore is always going on and on about the power of love, and—”

“Are you saying that I _love_ —”

“He’s your _brother_ , for Merlin’s sake, are you really going to deny it like a moody teenager?” Harry interrupts with a touch of fury. “Oh, wait, I forgot, you _are_ a teenager. Like _me_. Stop acting like you’re so superior, you twat. And I’m not about to let a ghost boss me around when there’s a way to get rid of you.”

“I really don’t think this is the way to get rid of me, Potter. We _had_ a _deal,_ ” Regulus says through gritted teeth.

“Well, you’re not offering up any other ideas than Kreacher, right? In the meantime, this is the best one _I’ve_ got, so _I’m_ going to try it. You heard Hermione earlier; I’m crazy. So I’ll _fix_ the problem because I refuse to talk to that goddamn house elf if I can _help_ it because he’s _horrible_. So I _have_ to be crazy. And, anyway, didn’t you hear her talking about the letters I wrote? I’m thinking about them now, but I don’t even remember writing them. So, something must be wrong with me, right? And you’re like some weird side effect to all this, I don’t know how. Like a boil that needs to be popped after you drink a Puking Potion with too much porcupine quill and not enough eagle-lizard yolk. And there’s always some way to get rid of a ghost, right? This is like Lewis Carroll. And you’re, like, the Ghost of Christmas Past, or something, except we both need to face our literal issues and somehow, I don’t know, triumph and grow without needing the other two ghosts.”

“Lewis Carroll?” Regulus blinks in confusion. “You’re starting to sound a little crazy, Potter,” he says hesitantly, a note of fear entering his voice as Harry begins to pace and gesticulate, his tone getting higher and higher.

“And I can’t go to St. Mungo’s, or anything like that, because every goddamn magical thing in the magical world _knows_ me, and even if they didn’t, well that wouldn’t matter because the wizarding world doesn’t give a shit about all that bogus about mental wellness or sanity. Just look what they did to Lockhart. Locked up without a hope. Just look at _Mad-Eye Moody_ , for heaven’s sake. So, my only choice is to go find a Muggle. To fix me,” he concludes desperately.

“You – you’re not making any sense—"

“Really?” Harry replies cheerfully. “I think this is the most sense I’ve made in months.”

He turns back to the fireplace, ignoring Regulus’s spluttering, and grabs a steady handful of green powder.

“Leaky Cauldron, London!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry for taking forever to get to hogwarts alksdfjdf i promise i have my reasons and i promise my work summary is going to make it into the story next chapter
> 
> [tumblr](https://firefork.tumblr.com/)


	4. Is This The Real Life?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is this the real life? Is this just hallucination-induced fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from Re-gulus-ality. (Or maybe Harry's depressed? Who knows.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (i'm sorry. the summary. sorry.)  
> I swear I have an explanation for this late update: school, and taking more courses than I should, what else? also, i'm hopelessly obsessed with james acaster. why, you ask? i have confusing feelings for badly dressed m*n

Theoretically, Harry knows this is a bad idea. First, there’s essentially no guarantee that Muggle London can give him what he needs. He realizes this several steps too late, right as he ducks out of the Leaky Cauldron under his Invisibility Cloak, that Muggle London is highly unlikely to have any solutions for, well, being _haunted_.

Growing up in the Muggle world tends to do that to someone. Causing huge oversights like this, namely.

Secondly, he’d promised Mrs. Weasley that he wouldn’t go anywhere other than Grimmauld Place. The shame turns and flips in his stomach as he thinks about how he’s been treating the Weasleys ever since arriving. A part of his mind sits and pulls the petals off flowers, asking, _I’m a bad person, I am not. I’m a bad person, I am not._

(He’s surrounded by stems.)

And then there’s the fact that he’s _maybe_ kind of sort of a massive target for a bunch of highly-trained, lethal, adult dark wizards with few moral compunctions, which makes it incredibly unwise for him to be in public, but he has a cool cloak and an underdeveloped sense for danger, so everything will be just fine.

Of course.

As soon as he ducks into the alley next to the pub, away from the steady trickle of Muggles getting to work, he realizes that he doesn’t exactly _know_ how to find a therapist’s office. Ignoring Regulus’s furious aura, he stops a random friendly-looking woman and asks, “Um, ma’am, do you know where I can find a, um, therapist? Therapist office?”

The woman is half turned towards him, and she furrows her brow at Harry as if he were the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen in her life, but her expression seems a bit judgmental.

“Can’t you read a map, dear?” she asks briskly. Harry feels a bit hurt. Of course he knows how to read a map. Well, moving and enchanted maps of a confined indoor castle, but a map, nonetheless.

“Er,” he says.

She turns fully to him and peers into his face as if looking for some kind of answer. Judging by the way her expression shifts from irritation into one of understanding and sympathy, she’s apparently found what she was looking for. Harry isn’t sure how to feel about that.

“Go to that building over there and check the floor directory. I’m sure you’ll find something. Have a good day, sweetie.”

As the lady troops away, Regulus audibly smacks his forehead in a very un-pureblood manner.

“You absolute _fool_ ,” he groans.

“I take offense to that,” Harry mumbles as he makes his way towards the building, dragging the ghost along with him like a reluctant dog on a leash.

It takes almost half an hour for Harry to shuffle through the entire building, and it takes another fifteen minutes for him to figure out the vague meanings of the signs next to all the doors, using Hermione’s book as a reference, which is a bit difficult to do under the cloak because of the way it rustles and keeps pressing his bangs into his eyes.

How is a _Muggle_ building so unnavigable and _confusing?_ It doesn’t have prankster corridors or moving staircases, but somehow all the narrow hallways, with their beige walls and grey doors, are so lacking in personality that they don’t even need magic to make a maze.

Harry feels woefully useless. How would he and Ron have ever survived five years at Hogwarts without Hermione?

“How much longer is this madness going to last?” Regulus derides to empty air. For the past hour, he’s been letting himself get pulled along by the bond because he can’t track Harry while he’s under the cloak. He’s resorted to whispering scathing comments about the Muggle carpet and the Muggle decorations—though he does seem oddly taken with the lights and electricity. Every once in a while, he makes a comment about Harry’s invisibility cloak.

“You’re just jealous,” Harry says inanely, to which Regulus becomes snarly and then stoic once more, before he finds another Muggle decoration to offend him.

(“My word – baubles that don’t float _or_ glow, and they’re _on a string_. This is such a _drab_ ornament it should be legally _offensive—_ ")

It takes another ten minutes for Harry to remember that, at six to seven in the morning, all these offices are probably closed.

It takes five seconds after that for Harry to remember that Mrs. Weasley wakes up at seven every morning, without fail.

“ _Fuck,”_ he says emphatically, and because he doesn’t have Hermione with him or any sufficient knowledge of Muggle suffixes, he grabs a pamphlet from the racks next to every door that says ‘Doctor’ and hopes for the best.

✷

By the time he scrambles back through the fireplace at the Burrow and launches himself up the stairs, into Percy’s room, Mrs. Weasley is only just beginning to make movements from her side of the house. Harry heaves a sigh of relief; it’s remarkably easy to sneak out of the house as long as he’s not one of her children.

Oddly, this realization sends a brief pang of hurt through him, but there’s no time to dwell on that.

He pulls the lumps of crumpled paper from out of his pockets and his bag, tossing them onto the bedspread.

“Starkers, Potter,” Regulus mutters. “I honestly don’t think this foolish plan of yours will do anything. We should give up on this madness and go find Kreacher like I originally suggested. Like we originally _agreed_ on.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “How would you know? Don’t be such a downer—we haven’t even tried yet.” He still doesn’t know why Regulus wants the elf so badly.

Immediately, the first few pamphlets are useless. Optometry, gastrointestinal issues, _reproductive health_ —none of those are, well, anywhere close to what Harry needs. He doesn’t even understand what some of these words mean—at least not until Regulus comes in with his superior knowledge of Latin to decipher the big science words.

“You purebloods and your posh customs,” Harry grumbles, to which Regulus says, “Well do you deny it’s useful?” to which Harry has nothing to say, really.

Both of them flush at the next pamphlet—‘Erectile Dysfunction’—and Regulus rapidly retreats to his corner, avoiding any further involvement with Harry’s terribly dumb plan.

A while passes and the sun climbs higher before Harry finally reaches the ones he’d been hoping for when he came up with the plan in the first place: grief counselling.

Harry has had a hard couple of months—this, he won’t deny. At times the weight of his own guilt is so heavy that he feels he’ll be flattened like a flapjack.

He takes a deep breath as he opens the pamphlet…and automatically slams it back onto the bed and screams into his pillow in frustration. It’s another one of those pamphlets that only has a phone number and a useless explanation of the doctor’s service. Granted, Harry knew, deep down, that his hare-brained idea probably wouldn’t yield decent results, anyway, but it’s still incredibly demoralizing for this to happen right in front of Regulus.

Harry opens another pamphlet. And his breath catches, inexplicably, as he reads the big red heading, “The Five Stages of Grief,” and the bulletpoints underneath the subheading, “Possible Experiences.”

Next to _c) Hallucinations_ , is a colourful doodle of a man, holding his head, while kneeling before a white bedsheet ghost.

Why do all these pamphlets have drawings for children? And Hermione’s book, too. At first the simplicity seemed welcome, but the realization that the readers of these books and pamphlets are being treated like children is just…demoralizing. Why would a child need counselling? Some might, but the bulk of all the sad and messed-up people are sad and messed-up teenagers and adults, seeking reprieve, seeking peace. Or maybe that’s the point. To be crazy—to be a freak—is to be uninhibited, like a child, consigned to suffer in a sea of beaten down normal people. Harry looks down at the pictures again, his gaze wandering over the patches of colour and the smooth, rounded shapes. Maybe none of that is the case. To be a freak is just to be a thing that needs to be treated with delicacy, or it might break and become worse. Undeveloped and untrained in normality. Like a child.

Harry closes his eyes and laughs shakily. Where are these ideas coming from? He scans the pamphlet again—‘The Five Stages of Grief’: Denial; Anger; Bargaining; Depression; Acceptance—before throwing it aside with the others.

✷

Time passes.

_I’m going bonkers,_ Harry thinks to himself as he tears through the pile of Muggle pamphlets. He scowls at the titles, things like ‘Foolproof Guide to Losing a Loved One’ or ‘Navigating the Stages of Grief.’ Like another tasteless advert in the Daily Prophet: Muggle Therapist Version.

But what can he do? One, he’s desperate for _any_ answer, magical or not. And, two, he’s pretty sure that it is _not_ normal to cope with Sirius’s death—no, baby steps, _accident_ —by _hallucinating_ his dead ex-Death Eater little brother as a personal pet _ghost._

Which is why, as he checks over his shoulder for the bajillionth time, he’s hoping really, _really_ hard that the problem is gone. But—

“Loath as I am to say it, Potter,” drawls the flickering, irritated spirit of Regulus Arcturus Black, who’s been staring at the back of Harry’s head, “I’m inclined to believe that we are stuck together. _Indefinitely.”_

He turns his transparent body to the window, arms crossed, clearly annoyed and impatiently waiting for the moment Harry finally accepts that there’s no getting rid of him.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Harry is very much not ready—he’s slowly going mad and _maybe_ his little trip to London was ill-advised and unfruitful, and he only did it as an obligatory part of teenage rebellion; maybe he really just needed an out from this suffocating house and their suffocating concern; he just needed to breathe real _air_ and he needed to be alone. Or, he’s just an angsty teenager, pumped full with adrenaline ever since June when…well, and it’s absolutely insane that he got saddled with a _ghost_ when all he wants is to be alone _God_ he just needs to be alone and maybe, just maybe, he’s not entirely okay.

_Bargaining,_ Harry tells himself as he takes a deep breath. _That’s the stage I’m at. Bargaining._

The door suddenly flings open with a _bam_ , startling Harry, who lays himself over all the pamphlets with a _splat_ like a splayed chicken.

“Breakfast time— Merlin, what’s going on?”

Ginny stands at the door with a hand on her hip, staring down at Harry with a look of pity and question.

“Uhhh. Nothing,” he says intelligently. Accordingly, she shoots him a baleful glare.

“You’re not reading porn mags, are you? In Percy’s room? Because that would be disgusting.”

“NO!” he exclaims, flushing a deep cherry red. “No! No, no, no, this isn’t what it looks like, I swear.” He flaps his arms like a goose in wild gesticulation. “Just. Uh. Learning how to fly. Love brooms, gotta love flying. Ha.”

Ginny’s expression is absolutely priceless. Her arms uncross as she bends down to his level, like an adult speaking to a disturbed child. Which he isn’t. Of course. And he’s older than her.

“Are you okay, Harry?” she asks hesitantly. “You don’t need help, do you? I mean, it doesn’t seem like these magazines have an awful lot of brooms in them, maybe you’re imagining things—"

Harry shakes his head frantically and ignores the sinking feeling in his gut upon hearing her question. Imagining things? Wisely, he chooses to keep his mouth shut and the knowledge of his field trip to London to himself.

“Allll…right then. Breakfast downstairs. Hurry up.” With that, she closes the door behind her in a haste, and all the strength in his limbs leaves him as he flops back onto the floor like a wizard pancake.

“Potter. You,” Regulus says between breathless bouts of silent laughter, “have completely and _utterly_ lost the plot.”

Harry groans and lets his forehead fall to the floor.

✷

The day passes uneventfully. In fact, it almost feels normal. He eats late breakfast, wanders around with Ron and Hermione for an hour, and then gets bullied into eating lunch despite having just eaten brunch. He de-gnomes the garden, plays Quidditch with the Weasleys, and fields suspicious looks from Ginny.

But every once in a while he catches a glimmer in the corner of his eye. A spectre hanging around the edge of his vision. And his heart plummets at the reminder of Regulus, the dark hair and grey eyes, and inevitably he remembers—

“ _Oof!”_

“Blimey, Harry, you’re supposed to get hit by Bludgers, not _Quaffles,_ ” Ron chides as he flies to a stop next to Harry, who’s rubbing his chest after the collision.

“Try not to get in my way next time, yeah?” Ginny calls out to Harry from the other side of the makeshift pitch, annoyed that he accidentally blocked her goal.

“Sorry, guys, just got…lost in thought,” he mutters. His eyes dart over to the bench where Regulus is perched a few feet away from Hermione. Regulus’s expression is mostly blank, as per usual, but the twitching of his lips belies mirth.

Harry scowls at being made fun of and flies back to his position, high above the others, ready to look for the Snitch.

“Let’s go again.”

So the game continues, and so does the rest of the day, then dinner, and all the while Regulus is there like an annoying afterthought, a washed out, transparent image flickering in and out of Harry’s consciousness and constantly reminding him and _reminding_ him.

When he finally bids good night to Ron and Hermione and opens the door to Percy’s room to get to bed, Regulus is there, perched on the windowsill, legs drawn up to his chest. As soon as he hears Harry he lets his posture fall back into something more proper with back upright and his legs crossed, a picture-perfect pureblood. Harry rolls his eyes.

Regulus flickers again, irritated.

“Why are you rolling your eyes?”

“Because you’re ridiculous, that’s why. Do you flicker when you’re annoyed?”

“Well, it only happens around you, so I’d assume so,” he sniffs.

Harry’s mouth stretches into a shit-eating grin.

“What?” Regulus asks warily.

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just…that’s…good to know.”

Harry sits down on the narrow bed, and his eyes catch on the last pamphlet he looked at, the one about symptoms of grief and hallucinations. He pauses, his mind thinking about everything and nothing at all.

He suddenly laughs with delight, and Regulus throws him a nasty glare.

“What are you so happy about?” he asks when Harry won’t stop laughing. At some point, his laughter turns into wheezing gasps for air, but Harry shows no signs of stopping. Eventually, he sits up and turns to Regulus with a distant, peaceful look on his face. It’s unnerving, but Regulus asks the question again anyway.

“I’ve figured it out,” he responds airily.

“What?”

“I’ve figured out why I’m seeing you.”

Regulus’s eyes grow large with shock, and his posture loosens. “Tell me.”

Harry’s grin widens.

“I,” he starts, with drama, “am going crazy.”

Silence.

“That’s the reason, Regulator Blackness. I must be seeing you because I have some screws loose in my head, and all this,” he waves helpfully at Regulus and the pile of papers, “is just one big hallucination.”

“ _That’s_ your solution, Potter? You think we’re stuck together like this because _you’re_ the one hallucinating?”

“Yep.”

“Excuse me,” Regulus continues icily. “Then what about how I feel? I’m frustrated beyond belief right now, but at the very least I have the presence of mind to accept it and get on with figuring out how to _fix_ our situation, and you’re just going to sit back and pretend this is all a _hallucination_ coming from inside _your_ mangy head?”

“See, this is just the hallucination’s way of trying to convince me its real by asserting its own perspective and emotions. But all that’s a creation of my head, too,” Harry muses. “Wow, you are such a good hallucination. I’m kind of proud of myself for coming up with you; you’re pretty convincing. You even flicker!”

“Potter, I’ll show you convincing—”

“Now it’s threatening me. I should probably stop talking to it—don’t want to give the illusion any more power, and all that.” Harry leans back and beams at Regulus. Conversely, Regulus takes a deep breath to calm himself.

“Potter, we should discuss civilly.”

Harry hums, dutifully ignoring Regulus, who’s flickering like a broken lightbulb.

“Potter. Potter!”

“I can’t hear you because you’re not real.”

Regulus takes a deep breath and slumps back against the window, all façade of perfect posture gone in his frustration. “How do you know any of us are real?”

Harry hums petulantly, intent on ignoring Regulus, but he continues in his dangerously unobtrusive tone.

“You say I’m not real, but if that’s the case, then I’d argue none of us is real,” he suggests airily, calm and soft. “We’ve all been magicked to see and experience a specific set of sensations, but who’s to say that anything I see is the same as anything you see? For all you know, our consciousness may all just be one elaborate spell. How does that sound to you?”

Visibly, Harry shivers. “Sounds like a nasty trick.”

Regulus continues. “Doesn’t it, Potter. I much agree. Think on the elaborate spell; if that is indeed the case, that all our experiences have been predetermined and engineered into existence, then there is scarcely a scrap of meaning to our own existences. Rebelling and saying, ‘Well, I’ll just do whatever I like,’ then that’s just another manipulated response. Escaping the formula is impossible because you don’t get to control your own consciousness. Even your own liberty is constructed; your freedom is false. Your idea of reality would all just be one game to a higher ventriloquist, much like the Dark Lord’s own methods, wouldn’t you say?”

“Stop,” Harry whispers quietly.

“Then you _stop_ insisting that I am a hallucination,” Regulus answers, his mellow tone hardened but hushed into a threat. “I am sorry to provoke the inner nihilist, but we are stuck with each other, and we need to find a way out. Childish insinuations of meta-reality do you no favours in our situation, Potter.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, words shaky. “I’ll stop procrastinating.” Harry takes a deep breath. “I’ll do what you want. Let’s go see Kreacher.”

✷

Sneaking out of the Burrow is getting easier and easier, though it certainly helps that Harry’s created a situation where the Weasleys would feel bad if they didn’t let him go, or they would feel bad at having to make him stop to explain every departure.

Harry winces at this thought. Regulus was right—he really did manipulate them, and so thoroughly, it’s nauseating.

On top of that, he also feels distinctly ashamed of himself, of the way he tried to explain away Regulus’s existence. But in his defence, his head doesn’t feel right. Half the time it doesn’t feel like he’s in the right plane of existence. Every sensation comes through foggily; his own thoughts are scattered; his reasoning is half-formed. It’s part of how he’s avoided this problem for so long—unproductive squabbling and petty banter were more comfortable than facing the situation head-on.

(‘ _I hate you, really,_ ’ he thinks to himself.)

“Kreacher!” Regulus calls out as soon as they tumble through the Floo.

Obviously, nothing happens. Harry raises his eyebrow at Regulus, who grimaces in return.

“It doesn’t hurt to hope. Call Kreacher,” he orders.

“Do I have to?” Harry whines. Regulus glares. “You’re a ghost that no one else can hear or see. How is an elf going to help you?”

“Can’t a ghost want to see his old elf?”

“Not this one,” he grumbles quietly. “Also, he’s not your elf anymore. Kreacher belongs to me, now. A Potter,” Harry teases, putting particular emphasis on his name.

Regulus flinches at this, and Harry feels slightly bad, but...this is a Death Eater. A Death Eater that can’t even take revenge if he wanted to. The opportunity is just too good.

“He was loyal to me,” Regulus responds softly, and immediately Harry’s mirth is quelled by the undercurrent of pain in his words. “Just call him,” Regulus repeats, and this time Harry acquiesces.

“Kreacher!” The elf appears with a crack.

“Yes,” Kreacher says with maximum reproach, and not once does he spare a glance to the space next to Harry where Regulus stands with badly hidden expectation.

He sneaks a glance at Regulus, but his expression suddenly looks made out of stone. Unyielding, impassive, the corners of his mouth just a bit too tense.

Kreacher is glaring at Harry impatiently, which makes him feel threatened even though, theoretically, the elf can’t harm him. So Harry looks at Regulus again and makes jerking gestures towards Kreacher.

Regulus’s eyes slide from the elf to Harry with a look of pure loathing before he finally says, “Ask him if the thing I gave him was destroyed.”

“That is awfully vague,” Harry complains on impulse, before realizing his mistake and backtracking. “...awfully vague greeting there, _Kreacher_. Don’t you usually say ‘Master’ or something? Not that there’s anyone else in this room. Haha. And I don’t like the title but. Um. Yeah. Respect is…tantamount. Yes.”

“Be nice to him,” Regulus hisses.

Harry gives Regulus an odd look, but he sees no other way to continue the conversation on the topic of respect that he doesn’t even want, so he asks the question.

“Kreacher, is the thing that...your young master gave you....destroyed?”

Kreacher freezes.

“You have not given me anything to destroy, Master,” he mutters.

“No, not me. Your previous one. Not Sirius either. The one before that.” He hesitates. “R – Regulus.”

The panicked look in Kreacher’s eyes seems to increase, and he avoids eye contact as he replies, “What do you mean, Master?”

Harry casts Regulus a helpless, beseeching look, but the boy is too busy staring at Kreacher with a disarmed, uncomfortably open expression. Harry looks away and fixes his attention back on Kreacher.

“The... the um... the thing,” he repeats, insistent. “That Regulus Black gave you. Is it gone? Destroyed?” He searches desperately for another word because this is all the information Regulus gave him to work with, the stingy bastard, and Harry needs to somehow _not_ let Kreacher realize that he’s actually completely clueless. “...Smashed?”

To Harry’s utter shock, the elf breaks down in tears. “No! No, Kreacher has failed, Kreacher has failed the kind Young Master! The nasty, nasty, dark—“ He stops and dissolves into a sobbing mess once more.

Now, Harry is just a sixteen-year-old boy. (Almost. He has another month to go.) And sixteen-year-old boys are notoriously bad with crying, particularly crying themselves. Though he has his own problems with crying… But the point still stands that he is bad with crying—crying children, crying adults, crying girls, crying boys, especially Gryffindor boys. And now to add to the list, apparently, crying house elves for whom he feels no affection whatsoever. Affection, not including the common human decency of feeling awkward and sad in the face of another’s vulnerability.

“Um,” he supplies helpfully.

Regulus, through his own mild panic—apparently eighteen-year-old boys are not any better at the crying thing—manages to shoot Harry a nasty glare.

“Comfort him, you nitwit.”

“There, there,” Harry adds. The withering glare that he receives from Regulus is humbling.

Finally, the sobs subside.

“No,” the elf croaks mournfully at last. “Kreacher could not destroy it.”

“Uh...” He looks back to Regulus.

What do I do?! he signals frantically.

“I don’t know!”

You asked me to do this!!!

“Master?”

“Huh?”

Kreacher shoots him another look of disgust, clearly questioning the exchange between Harry and what appears to be thin air, but he doesn’t ask about it.

“How does Harry Potter know about this item?” Kreacher croaks suspiciously.

“I um. It – “ Harry frantically searches for an answer. “I, uh, it was in Sirius’s will. To destroy the thing.” Immediately, Harry knows he’s said the wrong thing. Regulus’s fantastically pained grimace matches the enraged horror on Kreacher’s face.

“ _IMPOSSIBLE!_ ” Kreacher shrieks. “ _THE FILTHY BLOOD TRAITOR CANNOT KNOW— HARRY POTTER IS A LIAR—”_

Harry pales dramatically.

“NO! WAIT! I’m sorry! I lied! Uh…”

Kreacher’s almost fuming out of his ears.

“I came across old notes!” he backtracks quickly. “At Hogwarts! I found them hidden under stone. They had Regulus’s name on them,” he finishes breathlessly. Kreacher’s expression screams his scepticism, so Harry continues. “I didn’t tell you earlier,” he says as diplomatically as possible. “because, uh, they got destroyed by, uh, Umbridge. During one of her inspections.” Harry prays fervently that Kreacher knows enough about Umbridge to accept the excuse but not enough to know what she actually does. It seems that it works because the elf’s sceptical expression melts into its regular look of disgust.

Harry holds in his relieved sigh, but he feels a twinge of irritation when he catches Regulus’s appraising look from the corner of his eye. It unsettles him, that Regulus Black may have found something to appreciate in Harry, because he doesn’t want to have a trait, to have done something that a _Slytherin_ could admire. The long-suppressed memory of the Hat’s words come unbidden, and he pushes them back down.

“Um, thanks Kreacher! You can go now!”

The elf gives him one last tearful look of angered confusion and Disapparates.

Harry takes a deep breath. “Did you get what you wanted?” he grits out. But Regulus doesn’t reply. Harry turns to look at him.

Regulus is still facing the spot where Kreacher stood, eyes trained on the floor. His expression is stricken, distant, and filled with a million other complicated emotions that Harry is too scared to name. He doesn’t know what made Regulus feel this way, but it scares him to acknowledge his companion’s humanity, a _Death Eater’s_ humanity. So he sits down on the nearest seat, a tall, uselessly fancy armchair, and waits for Regulus to reply.

Finally, Regulus moves from his spot and sits across from Harry, avoiding eye contact, but his expression has closed off again. Blank. Unyielding. But for the first time there seems to be a sense of purpose.

“Okay,” he begins shakily. “I know how to break my connection to the living world.”

Harry sits up. “You mean, you’ll go back to the afterlife? We won’t be attached anymore?”

Regulus nods slightly before drawing an unsteady breath, turning away from Harry.

“It seems, Potter,” he murmurs, “that we have work to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will get to hogwarts soon. 2-3 more chapters! it's in my outline, I promise. I just have a frustratingly long set-up. please comment/kudos :') it fuels my will to live
> 
> [tumblr](https://firefork.tumblr.com/)   
>  [art instagram](https://www.instagram.com/ringingjade/)


End file.
